By-Law #1: Say Hello in the Lift - Why We Are Changing the Way We Build Communities

Every building has by-laws which are generally something like no noise after 10pm, don't do this, don't do that.

If you've ever lived in a building where the by-laws were the only thing holding the place together, you'll know that these list of rules don't make a real community.

As we get ready to launch Flourish Soleira the Sherpa Team have been working on something to build our Flourish communities. Flouish Community Living Standards. The unwritten community building stuff, written down. Not because we think our residents won't know how to behave, but because we know the small kindnesses that make a building feel like home are worth saying out loud, and worth committing to as a group.

By-law 1: Say hello in the lift instead of staring at your phone.

By-law 2: Hold the door for the person behind you, even when you're in a hurry.

If you haven't got the idea by now, think about lending a hand when you see someone wrestling with shopping bags or a pram, welcoming new neighbours, and if you walk past a bit of rubbish in the lobby, pick it up. That last one might sound small, but it's the one that says more about a community than any of the rest, (not to mention it helps us get body corporate fees to zero with less cleaning needed). Because picking up rubbish that isn't yours is a quiet little act of care. It says you've decided this place is worth looking after, and that the people who live here are worth looking after too.

That's really the heart of it. It's a shared understanding that the building you live in is only ever as good as the way the people inside it treat each other and the space they share. We can design beautiful apartments, and we have and will continue to do. We can choose finishes that age well, plan floorplans that are super liveable, and put the pool in the right corner to catch the afternoon sun. But the part that turns four walls into a home, and a building into a neighbourhood, is the part we can't draw on a plan. That bit belongs to the people who live there, supported by our concierge team.

What we can do, and what we're trying to do here, is set the tone. Making it clear from day one that this is the kind of place where people look out for each other. Where saying hello is normal, helping is expected, and caring about the shared spaces is just how things are done. And then trust the people who choose Flourish as home to carry it forward with us.

We've always believed Sherpa Group isn't really in the business of building apartments. We're in the business of building places people genuinely want to live, for the long haul. The buildings are the easy part. The community is the part we care most about getting right.