It seems that for many, some enforced time off earlier this year has given us the time to reflect on our lives, to embrace our family and friends, to rethink our business models and perhaps to consider what’s most important in our lives.
As part of that shift, many more people were asked to work from home. So many companies are now continuing this trend, the bottom line is that if you can work from home, today’s technology will allow you to work from almost anywhere. Working remotely from a small community is now more possible than ever. According to the wide network of realtors and developers we are in touch with while preparing for each issue, home sales in many smaller B.C. communities in these past several months have been much more robust than anyone could ever have imagined!
So, in this issue, we assist you in researching the right community for you among B.C.’s smaller cities and special towns. Size matters, but so does space, access, the natural surroundings and of course the community’s competitive and long-term advantages. See our cover story for more information on spaces with great work-from-home potential.
The dream of living in a new home–whether it’s built by a developer, custom builder or purchased as a packaged home–is alive and well, and we are seeing hundreds of new homes being built in almost every corner of B.C. I’ve personally always had a dream of living in a rustic-set dwelling, like a modern log home or timber-frame house, with luxurious amenities. These homes can be found in some of the coolest communities anywhere, all right here in B.C.–some with no luxury (or expense!) spared, others eminently affordable. Our team also consulted experts to research modern lifestyle concerns such as “doing the math” on a new or existing mortgage, solving storage challenges and, of course, living in close proximity to a winery, an option that has never seemed more decadent or possible than it does right now, with all the residential opportunities in B.C.’s burgeoning wine regions.
The downtime during this past spring and summer also gave us the opportunity to revisit our own publishing business model. We enhanced our Web site to include a very engaging video platform, where we host dozens of immersive community and developer videos, allowing you to take a one-stop tour of the province from your own home screen. I recently enlisted my son, a recent film school graduate, to create a mash-up of all these videos as a teaser for this engaging new platform, and we’re pretty impressed with his work (says the proud Dad….)!
We also decided to enhance our print distribution to not only subscribers of The Globe and Mail in primarily Vancouver and Calgary, but also the National Post in Vancouver. The cohort of urban-dwellers and homeowners looking to re-envision their lives in highly livable communities within Canada’s most beautiful province is bigger and stronger than ever.
Right Sizing trends are only growing and developing, as you’ll see in this issue. Enjoy!
