Michael Sasges
Sun
First in an occasional series
In metro Vancouver right now the buyer of a new-construction home must negotiate two challenges, one pleasant, one less so.
Product is plentiful, report after report demonstrates.
But it is costing builders and developers more than ever to bring to market, because of shortages of labour and material, some of the shortages due to Winter Olympic projects.
With land availability, the competition for labour and material dominates the deliberations of development company owners and their managers, they have told me time and time again.
What follows is an introduction to a tool that might help the new-home shopper make choices worthy of the most important financial decision he or she will probably ever make.
This tool is the provincial building-industry competition known to all involved as the Georgies.
Let’s get out of the way what a Georgie is not.
Possession of a Georgie by a developer, builder or renovator is no guarantee of delivery of a new home or a renovation on time and on budget.
But it is a signal that company principals and their managers have enough management acuity and ability, and care enough about their public record, to organize an entry in a province-wide industry competition, with tight deadlines, adjudicated by out-of-town judges
Possession of a Georgie is no guarantee of a dispute-free or grievance-free relationship.
The improbability of that occurrence is well recorded, perhaps best recorded in House, a book about the construction of a single-family detached home in the United States, by an award-winning author, Tracy Kidder. (The Vancouver public library has two copies; Amazon.com, about 350 copies, new and used.)
Now let’s have a look, with one example, of what a Georgie is, or what possession of a Georgie might indicate.
Suppose you have narrowed your new-home choice to two similar products. One is from a company that year-in, year-out is a finalist in one of the Georgie categories, customer service. The other is from a company with no demonstrable customer-service record.
The former is selling its apartment for $460 a sq. ft.; the latter, at $455.
Is it worth parting with an extra $5 to buy from a company that has demonstrated to adjudicators of a provincial competition the presence of a “service strategy;” “creativity in addressing industry-client needs; strategies to eliminate callbacks or defects; and strategies to promote professional development?” It’s certainly worth considering.
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The Georgies are organized by the Canadian Home Builders’ Association’s B.C. chapter.
This is a different organization than the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association managed by Westcoast Homes columnist Peter Simpson, although both are affiliates of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association and both share members.
The first requirement of a Georgie competitor is CHBABC membership. So, to say a Georgie is emblematic of new-construction or renovation excellence is to under-report. It is more accurate to say a Georgie is emblematic of excellence among CHBABC members.
The second requirement is temporal. For the 15th Georgie competition, the project entered must have been “built, renovated, developed, created and/or marketed” between Jan. 1, 2005 and Sept. 30, 2006.
In other words, the competition is annual, but the entries have a competition eligibility of almost two years.
Finalists were announced Oct. 31, after three days of judges’ review. Winners will be announced at an awards banquet on Feb. 2.
This year, the Georgie organizers accepted entries in 44 categories, six of them new. It makes for a lengthy awards banquet and the inevitable jokes about the most improbable category as the evening passes, best crawl-space renovation under three feet in height, for example.
For the 2006 finalist list, and the category criteria, visit chbabc.org on the Internet.
SHOW-HOME FINALISTS
The 2006 Georgie finalists in the show-home category, or ‘best interior design display suite’ category, are Woodland Hills on the Ridge, Kelowna; Westone Properties Ltd., for Sonnet, Langley; Concord Pacific, for Flagship, Vancouver; Onni, for Flo, Richmond; Adera, for Red, Richmond; and Townline, for 1168 Richards, Vancouver.
Townline’s 1168 Richards project (above, left) is the first of six downtown Vancouver projects completed by the long-time suburban developer and builder, under the Metroliving brand. The ‘garage door’ behind the seated Yvonne Drinovz, the 1168 Richards sales manager, is a signature feature of the Metroliving homes. Alda Pereira is the interior designer.
The Red interior designer, Daniele Lareau (above, right), is a Georgie finalist for the third year in a row. Watch the runways of Milan if you want to know what’s coming down in a metro Vancouver show home in a year or two, she advised in the Westcoast Homes story on the Red development.
At Sonnet, Jessica Matlock (left) is a buyer, with boyfriend Wesley Phillips. Further, she likes the project so much she hired a sales assistant. Triple J Interiors is the Sonnet interior designer.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
