Why are we so obsessed with the word 'lifestyle'?
Everything in our lives is about decisions, including starting a family and settling in one's very own place. Those who have purchased houses or condominiums should be familiar with the decision-making process of buying residences for themselves and their
It is one of the most important experiences for most of us, since this is a once-in-a-lifetime decision that will financially oblige us for the next 20 years or so, and it is an investment in a place where we intend to raise our families and build our lives around it.
And since we view this decision as an investment, the mentality that comes with it revolves around financial capacity, additional liabilities and expenses, property appreciation, and many additional agendas that fill our head with mathematical and scientific justifications for the purchase.
So it comes as no surprise that the factors we take into account when making a decision about the place we will supposedly spend the next 20-30 years living in are very basic.
They include location (how long does it take to commute back and forth every day, how much it would cost each month for petrol, how much will it appreciate in value based in five years’ time etc), price (of course this is prerequisite but sometimes we ask about how much profit we can make in the future, how much yield we should get renting it out etc), specifications and function (materials used and size of the place should justify the price, communal areas and number of bedrooms and bathrooms etc).
Having said all that, I sometimes wonder if there should be other major criteria that consumers look into, and the word that springs up is “lifestyle”. But wait, you might argue that “lifestyle” is nothing new and developers as well as consumers have been associating the word with the commercial perspective of the real-estate industry for
ages.
Developers try to make consumers buy into the projected lifestyles that have been carefully selected and matched with the brands, type of residences, segments, price, and prospective consumers’ psychology and demography.
But most of the time, I have to say based on my experience, nobody has successfully integrated lifestyle-related agendas to make it a prerequisite factor yet; investment-related agendas always outweigh lifestyle-related ones when decisions are made.
However, there is one example from my recent reading that I think is very interesting and has some implications that we could learn from.
This article was about a development in the Covent Garden area of London.
Covent Garden is famous for fashion and the arts, as well as the Royal Opera House, and people who are familiar with the area and its history know that there is something different that gives it special charm. The developer in the article has carefully articulated and planned its projects in harmony with local flavour and lifestyle, so deeply that it would prefer to say it “curated” rather than “managed” the projects.
The developer worked with the area’s main magnet, the Royal Opera House, and reinvented the area to align a retail environment to match the type of their projected customers.
Buyers, who they presume are donors to the Opera House, will get special Silver Membership status, which normally costs £5,000 (Bt237,000) annually. By doing such things, the developer has managed to make prospective clients feel as if they are not just buying an apartment but are buying a part of the area.
This case shows us that lifestyle is not something that we can pull out of thin air and presume that, with massive marketing and communications campaigns thrown at them, consumers will believe that what we are offering is genuine.
For real estate, “lifestyle” is a vague term and irrelevant to consumers unless we understand the local history, people and culture and amplify them in a way that offer value to both consumers and community.
