acho que não

A ridiculously large amount of time and web real estate is spent lovingly displaying artist's renderings of the inevitable marble and chrome detailed lobbies with 20 foot ceilings. And then you get half hearted line drawings of the layouts of the actual suites with minimal information about them beyond the square footage. Given that I'm interested in buying a place to live, and not a place to hang out and chat with the equally inevitable 24 hour 'concierge' (by which they mean an underpaid, unqualified security guard in a black turtleneck), I fail to see the attraction of these mammoth lobbies.

No one hangs out in the lobby of their condo building. Sure, it might impress your guests for about 2 seconds before they hop on the elevator, but they're pretty likely to notice that while your lobby has leather furniture and 20 foot ceilings and marble walls, your actual condo has IKEA, claustrophobia and scratches in duralex semi-gloss because you're paying maintenance on a lobby you never even see (since you enter via the parking garage) instead of using that money for something you might actually enjoy.

I realize that condo construction isn't really a web sort of business. It's fundamentally brick-and-mortar in a way that few businesses are. At the same time, developers are building websites for their developments, so they obviously see some value there. So why do so many of those websites suck so very, very badly?

Few websites contain more information than the print advertisements in New Homes & Condos. Some, and I'm looking at you, Sophia Condos, actually have less info on their website than in their print ads. Less! Nowhere on the web page does it even say *where* the development is going to be. But they do have that lovely flash intro of kaleidoscoping vaguely European things, so I guess that makes up for not having the slightest idea where I'd end up living if I bought a condo there. A map to the sales center, when the sales center is not on the actual build site is not an acceptable substitute for location information, Plaza Royale.

Pricing information is rare as hell, which is sort of to be expected. They want you to keep in mind that 'suites from $189K' advertised price instead of the reality that anything larger than your couch is actually closer to $300K. But would it be so hard for more sites to have floor plans available? Preferably on a page that doesn't require individually clicking on each cutesy suite name to load the corresponding painfully slow PDF file?

Here's another fun idea--how about some idea where the complex is in the development process? It'd sure be helpful to have an idea whether prospective move-ins were this year, next year or in 2027 when they finally sell enough of those damned units to start construction, no? I don't need firm dates, but some ballpark figure would be nice. I know they have them, because if you find newspaper or condo mag articles on the developments, they'll list them there. So why not on the website?

That's right, my building doesn't even exist yet, but already, we have condo board meetings. Or, actually, what we have are co-op meetings, even though the building will be a condo, not a co-op, since it's being built on behalf of a co-op of the owners who will then sell the units to the individual owners at the time of the incorporation of the condo. Makes perfect sense, no?

I'm amused to find that I seem to have pre-emptively co-founded a stitch n' bitch group at the building which, I once again note, does not actually exist. I walked into the meeting and saw someone else knitting so I asked her if that was the knitting section of the room. She laughed and said yes. A few minutes later someone else came in and sat with us and pulled out her knitting. Now the three of us have all traded email addresses and guild information.

It sounds like construction has, not surprisingly, been pushed back a few months. I could've guessed that by the fact that they haven't yet knocked down the old building. On the other hand, the occupancy order has been altered, because they're going to start the phase 2 building first, and then occupy the two buildings simultaneously. This means that despite construction being pushed back 3 months, I will, if things go to plan (ha!) probably get into my unit earlier than previously expected since I'll have one of the earliest occupancy dates -- probably in the second month out of 10 months of occupancy dates.

It never occurred to me, but apparently one of the biggest reasons why it takes so long to occupy a building is not, you know, waiting for it to be finished, but that once it is finished, you can only move a few units in a day because of a lack of elevators. The things you learn!