Real estate awards: Judging their authenticity
View(s):Many industries dispense gongs to the ‘superstars’ during an awards season. It is like a build-up to the festive season, a shot at building the feel-good factor and what’s more, everyone loves a celebration. So anyone who has accomplished something brag-worthy, now’s not the time to be humble, they say.
File picture of awards from a different event.
The obvious gains from these awards are the marketing opportunities, flaunting your achievements in gold, silver or bronze amazingly on your printed marketing materials, nonchalantly dropping the success into the tête-à-tête when gaining press coverage locally or even nationally. This is all marvelous.
Also add to this, we, the consumer constantly seek firms boasting four or five stars in ratings or with a “Best Of” award under their belts. In this type of environment, it is critical for any business to get credit for its dazzling achievements and innovative services or products in turn to discern themselves from competitors.
In the case of real estate sector these awards will be highlighting the tremendous growth prospects and potential that the sector offers and confirming the country’s growth potential in the real estate sector, most awards claim. And all say that they are the premier industry awards.
But when awards are judged on whether you can afford it then there’s something that’s not right about it. Especially in sectors such as real estate.
An award or assessment should be a reward for a good respectable real estate builder and it should do something to raise the standards of the whole real estate industry. They should encourage a high level of ethics, education, and professionalism among members in the industry and advocate on behalf of the profession. A lot of accolades around today are much diluted with far too many winners all over the world, an apartment builder told the Business Times.
When the awarding brand charges for the award, it carries no real weight as numerous other properties will carry the same award, he said. “A recent awards scheme seems absurdly awful. Why would anybody pay for the privilege of being awarded a logo from an awarding body? Why would we want to pay for the Awards Package? Shouldn’t it be free? Any award needs to be unbiased and fair in all respects. Any award means nothing unless it provides the end user (the landlord, the vendor, the buyer or the tenant) with something of value, something helpful to them,” he charged.
But an award awarding body has a different story. For starters, there’s no compulsion to enter any awards scheme. But without any cost nothing can be done. Nothing comes free.
“If we didn’t cost participants something these awards would not exist. We add a great deal of value to the packages with extra benefits from local media partners and exclusive exposure and promotion across our websites,” an awarding body website says.
So there should be a meeting point. But with all that’s going on in this sector – especially in terms of lawlessness and buildings collapsing -, it seems distant.