The typical way to do it looks something like this:

• Hire a creative agency

• Come up with a new name and brand identity that speaks to your target market

• Create a new website and new social media accounts

• Start marketing the project with this new single-purpose brand and identity in the forefront (the developer's brand is usually far less prominent)

Of course, this is the typical way and things do vary. What I would like to discuss today is this last point: the interrelationship between new project-specific brands and developer brands. Because in most other industries, the brand of the company is paramount. It is everything. When BMW releases a new car model, it is BMW and then the something. It is not the something, with BMW hidden at the bottom of the page.

So why is real estate any different?

One possible explanation is the entrepreneurial and opportunistic nature of development. New projects are often the result of people and groups coming together to make a specific "deal" happen. And unless you're an established player with a long history, you may not have a consumer-facing brand with much equity in it. So you rely on a new single-purpose one instead.

But perhaps the main reason is that, as an industry, we have never really succeeded at making buildings a product (architects sometimes despise when you call buildings this). It is for this reason that every building can feel like a prototype and that prefabrication remains this dream that never seems to become a reality. A product implies something repeatable and producible at scale. And buildings are generally not that. Every market and site are unique.

All of this said, there are ways that developers are building meaningful brands for themselves.

The first way is to obviously focus on building your own brand alongside or in lieu of strong project brands. One example of this is Toronto-based Urban Capital. They build a specific kind of condominium building/product and, to the extent that it's possible, it doesn't change whether they're building in Saskatoon or in Halifax. David Wex, one of the partners, describes this as branded vs. opportunistic real estate development.

Another example is Toronto-based Fitzrovia (which I wrote about, here). They are one of if not the most active rental developers in the city. And if you go into one of their apartment buildings, you'll find the same No. 10 Dean coffee shop and bar in the lobby; the same rooftop pool (called LIDO); the same gym (called The Temple); and the list goes on. Their goal is to build a consistent and hospitality-like experience for apartments.

The second way to go about building a brand is to make it so attractive that other developers will pay you to use it. The best example that I can think of is London-based YOO. A partnership between John Hitchcox (a developer) and famed designer Philippe Starck, they have built a business out of creating branded residences for third-party developer clients. And this is in some ways the holy grail of development: you get paid without taking on the risk of building.

Of course, this same licensing model is also used with hotels. And hotel brands are globally the most common kind of branded residence. What this obviously tells us is that brands matter a great deal in real estate. They matter so much that developers will pay to use the right one, because it will likely command a premium and it will likely increase sales/leasing velocity.

It is for this reason that I've always felt it important to grow the parent brand alongside any project-level brands. And it's why we never bother creating new social accounts for our individual development projects. Brand building takes time. If you're going to invest time and money into one, why not take advantage of the compounding at the very top of the house.

This is the current state of global electric vehicle adoption:

• Last year was the first year that global electric-vehicle sales reached 10% of all car sales -- the total was around 7.8 million cars (see above chart)

• Fully-electric vehicles accounted for about 5.8% of all car sales in the US, 11% of all car sales in Europe, and about 19% of all car sales in China -- China is leading in this department

• The US saw 807,180 fully-electric vehicle sales last year -- Tesla remains the biggest EV maker in the world

• In Germany, electric vehicles accounted for about 25% of all new vehicles produced last year -- BMW reported a 5% decline in new-car sales, but saw its EV sales more than 2x

• Similar story with Volkswagen: 7% decline in new-car sales; 26% increase in EV sales

• This year, some are predicting that China will see EV sales increase to every third car, and that it will reach its tipping point sometime between 2025-2030

It is obvious where all of this is heading. It is simply a question of how fast, and who will be the leaders at the end of the day.

All data sourced from the WSJ

Nathaniel Bullard's latest Sparklines article for Bloomberg Green makes some interesting arguments around EV adoption.

First, he shows that cars in general have been getting a lot more expensive. Looking at new vehicle market share in the US according to price (above), you can see how quickly cars over $40k have become about half of the market. Only some of this is inflation.

Nathaniel then goes on to show just how many people lease a luxury vehicle (apparently this is called lease penetration). For Infiniti it's 55.6%, for BMW it's 49%, and for Mercedes it's about 40%.

When you consider that "upfront cost parity" between EV and internal combustion vehicles is supposed to arrive sometime in 2024, there is an argument to be made that people are destined to start buying a lot more EVs in the near future.

They're already buying expensive cars and EVs will soon be cost neutral in that regard. At the same time, a lot of people lease their cars and will be in a position to easily switch when it makes sense to do that.

I think the greater barrier to adoption at this point will be the charging network and "range anxiety." Too many plug types and not enough charging stations, except maybe if you have a Tesla. But at some point that too will change, I'm sure.