After several decades in this business I’ve become accustomed to builder press release puffery, but a release-based article in Barrington Area Trib Local stood out from the pack.
The article opens with a question: “Have you noticed the stunning home perched up high on the north side of Penny Road just east of New Sutton Road?”
Well, no. It’s been months since I’ve gone past that location on busy Route 59 (a/k/a New Sutton Road), and all I recall is an empty field with no heights to perch on and no indications that Toll Brothers Woods of South Barrington was a “very popular community.” It didn’t appear to be, as the Web site currently informs me, “nestled in the heart of South Barrington,” but then I didn’t know that community’s heart is at its far western edge.
The 3,000 to 4,100 square foot homes form an “Estate Collection” and have names to trigger the status synapses: Harvard, Duke, Langley … Nothing unusual in that.
But then we come to the “exquisite” and “award-winning” (awarder unspecified) Duke model that features “a grand two-story foyer,” an “amazing kitchen” with “tons of workspace and storage” and an “expansive master bedroom suite.”
A Toll Brothers marketer sums it up: “The location, the land, our homes, the schools, the views . . . it’s the perfect combination of what today’s buyer is looking for and expects.”
Note to Toll Brothers: today’s buyer expects to be spoken to in a more human voice.
Prices begin in the upper $700s during the “big opening.”