Real estate investment and development is a numbers game: ROI. Established formulas suggest the more you put in (bigger and better) the more you get out. Dollars per square foot.
Next, you add a great marketing story, a "theme" of a place we love—Tuscan perhaps?
As we all know, this type of real estate does not evoke the feelings or happiness, wonder and adventure we get when we are immersed into the “real” Tuscany. But there is no money in that. Is there?
Real estate success needs a new paradigm. It needs to Get Real. Feel Real. Bring joy and meaning to the development process and end users. Lower development cost, boost local culture and place sustainability—make economic sense. Xsense.
It can be done. It has been done. Are you ready for the new paradigm? Have you adapted to the new generation of buyers? They are not looking for a roof over their heads, they want an exceptional and deeply authentic experience, a meaningful connection to their new neighborhood, to their new social environment.
They want it to be real.
What's needed is an entirely new process. Or rather, an old process. A process that's been tested by generations of humanity—and one that has never failed to create places that are loved and evolve with every generation. Imagine Catalonia. The English countryside. Bavarian mountain villages. The Provence. The Pueblo Magico in Mexico. Japanese Onsen towns. We fall in love with these place and want to take them home. We try to copy them and are disappointed that they never feel real.
Why not?
Because the places we fall in love with have been created by many generations who have passed down ideas and wisdom to the next—and every young generation has the liberty to tweak recipes and designs so that they respond to the needs and want of an era. Fashions change, yet stay rooted in traditions established by the elders. Dishes are reinvented, using the same ingredients forefathers used. Festivals are reincarnated, yet keep the same purpose. It's the phenomenon of culture, of humanity, of civilization.
What traditional places don't have (or need) are marketing and sales brochures, relics that almost always tell a fake story, a made-up story to help sell places that have no story. No traditions. No elders.
What they do have, eventually, are guidebooks that explain why buildings are built a certain way, why there are certain traditions and flavors. These stories connect us deeply to the generations before, their hardships and genii. It is this we fall in love with. It is not the story that makes the place, but it's the place that makes the story—everything we see, hear, touch, taste and smell connects to the deeper meaning of the place and becomes a very private story with every experience.
The Xsense approach leans on this very human generational process. One generation hands information to the next, along with their core values. Xsense will hand this foundational information to the design team. Before planners start the design process, we will have researched local culture, spoken to the community, have visited all museums and the families that know the land, we will have spoken to the children and elders and we will have been deeply immersed in the place and its culture.
We will not use this research to craft a marketing story that is separate from design but we share all of this information with the development team—from planners, architects, interior designers to operators and sales teams—so they they will then tell this story through their genii, their designs, and their solutions. It is Xsense's role to capture these design solution and pass them on to the next level of design and creation, just like any generation would hand their wisdom to the next. The place will tell the story. Not the other way around.
The result is a place where every touchpoint tells a part of the greater story. We believe that every aspect created has the potential to tell part of the story. You won't need a glossy marketing brochure, but you'll want a guidebook or even a documentary film to share the richness of all the elements of this place and how it is rooted, authentic and meaningful.
The experience of working in such a connected team in itself is transformational for every team member and it will create places that are here to stay, bring meaning to people's lives and joy to everyone.
