Canada's condo amenity wars
Competition for affluent condo buyers has developers piling on frills—car fleets, meditation walls and even perks that assuage the social conscience
Vancouver House (Courtesy of Ema Peter/Westbank)
The marketing material for Vancouver House listed 20 reasons to buy a home inside the residential skyscraper overlooking False Creek. Among them: use of a fleet of BMWs; access to a 25-m heated rooftop pool configured so it’s sheltered from the wind yet lets in sunshine; and a 24-hour concierge trained to the same standard as those at the five-star Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel.
But when Allen Oram joined the project as part of the Westbank Development sales team in 2014—before the building broke ground—he was moved to buy a unit for himself, in part because of a more unique incentive located halfway around the world. For each of the units sold at the 370-residence Vancouver House, another home would be constructed in Cambodia for poverty-stricken families living near a garbage dump.