City LivingYes, and it's good for us says one brochure designer. Edel Morgan reports

Two weeks ago I wrote about Menolly Homes' tempting offer to "join the beautiful people" of Baldoyle - or at least of Beaupark - a new apartment scheme which, if the brochure is to be believed, is only inhabited by fabulous twenty-something couples living in domestic bliss and surrounded by sublime scenery.

With so many new houses being built or in the planning pipeline, developers are having to pull out the stops to capture the lucrative first-time buyers' market. In the piece, I made the point that it has become more about flogging a lifestyle than a property - even if the sales pitch bears little or no relation to the reality. I asked if a development is so outstanding, why pretend it's swarming with supermodels sipping lattes and watching their state-of-the-art plasma TVs? Shouldn't the development sell on its own merits?

Paul O'Connor, who has a copywriting and design business which produces brochures for the new homes market, believes I'm missing the point. "Flogging a lifestyle is exactly what buyers need and want," he argues.

Providing "a straight list of features" of a property is not the full picture. "The benefits of those features need to be brought to life to enable the buyer to get a sense of what it would be like to actually live in these houses and in this area."

He concedes that it's true that "the idealised images employed go beyond reality but, like theatre, brochures need to shout to be heard. The pitch of advertising and the media generally has risen so high that it is seen as cheap if you don't have all the gloss and dazzle. It's almost the case that customers might subconsciously worry that, if the brochure was full of plain people and pictures taken on miserable grey days, the building itself could be faulty!"

So there you have it. It's all for your own good. Your mind is immediately put at ease because you instinctively know that the beautiful people wouldn't live in anything less than a perfect development.

Mr O'Connor says he has a suspicion that certain well-built and well-designed developments would still sell "if the developer just scribbled a list of features on a page and photocopied it, but would that be fair to the buyers? Don't we all want to believe we're buying something extra special?"

His company, Penhire, has a policy of not overdoing the sell, he says. "We stick to the facts, but then offer a heightened sense of the benefits of that fact. We avoid phrases like 'the perfect setting' (everywhere in the world seems to be perfect these days) and 'ideal for . . .' but, while we don't consciously stretch the truth, we do stretch the reader's imagination."

In a recent brochure for a development in south County Dublin, his company wrote: "If you feel adventurous, you might take out your walking boots and head off on the famous Wicklow Way, which starts in Marlay Park, and can take you through 132 kilometres of spectacular and varied landscape in the Garden of Ireland."

"Is it too much to evoke the whole expanse of Wicklow's beauty in relation to a scheme in suburban Dublin?" he asks rhetorically. "No," he replies. "I would argue, it's actually meant to inspire you to achieve a lifestyle that you probably would love but may only achieve on rare moments. Brochure moments! When your looking-gorgeous lover brings you a cup of freshly brewed coffee in a clean mug, while you, looking equally gorgeous, lie among your unmade but freshly laundered bedlinen."

It is true that a developer will no longer get away with producing a badly photocopied list of standard features. The quality of finish of a brochure might subconsciously hint at the quality of finish of the development. But is it stretching things to suggest that these brochures are actually providing a public service by encouraging us to want a better life?

In your quiet moments how often do you find yourself wishing "if only life was a series of brochure moments?" Indeed a reader from Glasnevin, who declined to be named, said in her e-mail that she takes issue at the number of brochure moments that involve happy coupledom.

"It's about time that property developers realised that not everybody is part of a blissful couple, who sit on verandas drinking wine and lying on beds laughing! There are actually some single people out there (like myself) who are anxious to get a foot on the property ladder but don't want to have to wait until they become part of a couple in order to do so!"

Christopher from Baldoyle says he is looking forward to the influx of "leggy models" into the Beaupark development. He is hoping that "with a bit of intermarriage" between the beautiful people of the development and "us plain folk of the village, with a bit of luck Baldoyle will be producing stunners by the next generation".

While he enjoys living in the area, he never realised it was such a scenic paradise. "I'd always gone to Howth before to take in the views but after reading the brochure I'm seeing my home town with new eyes."

emorgan@irish-times.ie