Folk camped on the Cook Street sidewalk for up to five nights this week to spend an average of $915 a square foot on South False Creek condominiums they can't occupy until 2011. By Thursday night, they'd committed $200 million to acquire 241 of the 302 units in the Millennium Water project's first offering.

It was a big day for star condo marketer Bob Rennie, whose staff recorded deals on an ultra-sustainable project that will put 1,100 residential units -- 400 of them affordable-housing and market-rental -- on its 11-hectare site.

But it wasn't Rennie's biggest opening day. That was the $240-million buying frenzy for the Woodward's redevelopment that also attracted a longer-lasting line of sidewalk campers -- not to buy in but to make their case for the homeless.