The urban-rural community where I live is facing new challenges. After years of static population, there is movement in the air. For various reasons people want to leave or move around. How to fill the empty houses? Selling them on the “open market” has been tried without much success.
This is not a standard piece of real estate. It’s a unique neighbourhood, with an integrated community school (K-12 – see http://www.sote.qld.edu.au), common spaces, walking trails, play spaces, bushland, and various kinds of residences (from free standing to townhouse style).
We need to market the community as a lifestyle option, something we’ve never done before, but which many communities elsewhere have done quite successfully. So I’m working on a web site as the starting point. Then we’ll need to think about advertising, open days, orientation courses for prospective residents, etc. Lots to learn, but also a great opportunity to reinvent the place and share with newcomers the wonderful place that so many parents and children have enjoyed over the past 20 years.