Are you a descendant of royalty? Is there a diminutive capillary’s worth of imperial blood coursing through your body?  No?  Do not panic. The new nobility in the Real Estate industry doesn’t have a thing to do with your lineage. It has mostly to do with your marketing.

And…it has to do with your intent. Sure, people have always known that a good product will mean that families will enjoy living there, that people will be happy, that residents won’t wake up hating their world. But never before have so many developers trumpeted their warm fuzzy motivations for moving dirt and stacking sticks so much more loudly than their product or its value. 

One by one, they’re joining the ranks of what I, personally, have dubbed ‘The New Nobility’. No longer is developing just about progress, parcels and profit. It now advertises that it’s about the noble pursuit of bringing American families into a golden era of togetherness. It’s about creating a nurturing nest where you share hot cocoa on the veranda with your husband and where—finally!—Grandpa will have time to get to know Timmy. It’s about a vision for a Suburbutopia that transcends having a quality product or an open floorplan or a bonus room or streets with curbs. 

I’m not saying people haven’t always advertised to the public how they care about these things, they most certainly have. I’m saying (at least in first touch marketing) it has now grown, swelled and finally begun to eclipse the meat that many homebuyers look for to make their decisions. Many developers are portraying themselves as so interested in creating a new, little world for family and the good life, that they’re coming off as nearly… divine. I suggest these guys make like Day 7 and give it a rest, already.

Now figure this: in another turn toward all that is good and holy,  there’s an emerging fresh-faced crop of nouveaulopers out there who actually believe the ‘noble intentions’ story. It’s the prospect of creating their very own [private, gated, amenitized] shining city on a hill that has drawn them to play the game. And they fancy themselves to be of a higher caliber than those who simply cut, clear, construct and cash in.

So, in the current real estate market that, if not declining, is at the least not growing, will dollars, square feet and investment value once again come to mean more than having a kindly, kingly developer of noble intent who claims to care solely about the joie de vivre of his subjects?

The big question is, are consumers buying any of it anyway? Are they buying the idea of a developer as noble? As having a higher purpose than profit? And, in the end, are they buying the Noble’s product over another?

In 2007, will cautious buyers give a Corgi’s arse about any of it?