Forget location. These days, it’s aspiration that moves real estate.

We’re not talking about just the desire to live a more exciting, romantic, or luxurious life. Such vague cravings can be easily satisfied by a house with a hot tub (even if it’s left dry) or a gourmet kitchen with granite countertops (perfect for eating takeout). But if you have a particular passion or self-image (animal lover? fashionista?), chances are there’s a place made—or at least marketed—just for you.

One pricey Manhattan condominium is being pitched to young Wall Street bucks who like fast cars: Every unit comes with access to a collection of exotic vehicles. Potential arts patrons are the target demographic for a Philadelphia property connected to the local art scene. In North Carolina, buyers can satisfy their Nascar jones with a home on a private racetrack. And at various colleges around the country, an Atlanta-based developer has been creating hotel condos complete with team-themed interiors for sports-obsessed alumni.

Developers and marketers are aiming new properties at very narrow buyer niches, hoping that unique extras will set them apart from the many other luxury properties that were thrown up during the real-estate boom. According to Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a real estate appraisal and consulting firm in New York, this targeting is akin to the developers’ trend five years ago of using name-brand architects to design buildings. “This is another element that’s not the design of the exterior or interior but makes the property more of an experience,” Miller says. “It’s target-marketing real estate the way you would any other luxury brand, like clothes or cigars or cars.”

The homes created by “starchitects” not only sold, they managed to command premiums of 20 percent or more. “But what happened was, as everybody did it, the premium reduced,” Miller says.

In some areas, developers hope that the spice of lifestyle will whet the appetites of buyers who are perhaps not so ravenous as they were in the middle of the boom. Back in 2005, you merely had to open a condo building for sales and buyers would step over their mothers to get a spot at any price. That year, Dean Jones, president of marketing firm Realogics, represented a 261-condo development in Seattle and promptly sold 95 percent of its units at about $600 per square foot, far above the local average of $450 per square foot. “You opened the floodgates, and you handed out position tickets,” Jones says. “There was a sense of urgency that drove a terrific number of sales in a very short time frame.”

Not anymore, now that the real estate market has chilled. “Our market has had more construction than it’s ever had in the past,” Jones says. “That’s changed our focus. We’ve realized we can’t deploy the same shock-and-awe program, because home buyers want to really explore their options before making a decision.”

In Manhattan, where the housing boom is still slightly echoing, buying a condo at 255 Hudson Street, just west of the celebrity-drenched SoHo neighborhood, also gets you a membership in Classic Car Club, a luxury-car-sharing group across the street. “By the end of spring, we should sell out,” says Christopher Westley, vice president of marketing for Urban Residential, the condo’s developer. Right now, a two-bedroom penthouse is available for $2.175 million, or about $1,400 a square foot; the average price for a two-bedroom condo in the neighborhood is closer to $1,200 per square foot, according to Miller Samuel.

Are you a dog lover? The 40-story Chelsea Stratus, now under construction in Manhattan, offers pet lovers a view from the rooftop dog run, which is prominently featured in the building’s marketing push. Suppose you consider yourself among the ultra-tasteful, especially because of your penchant for fine Italian suits. You could come home to a condo with Armani style: 20 Pine, a 38-story building, offers units fashioned by the Italian giant’s interior-design wing.

And if your thing isn’t Giorgio Armani but Jeff Gordon, or your home state is not New York but Texas? Not a problem.

Imagine a golf-course community, only with rip-roaring race cars in place of plodding carts. Plans for High Rock Raceway, near Charlotte, North Carolina, future home of the Nascar Hall of Fame, call for a two-and-a-quarter-mile road track with 120 trackside condos and nearby single-family lots. Residents can use the track as well as a clubhouse. Racers Ranch, a 1,600-acre community planned for the Dallas area, will have a four-mile road track that winds through woods, a gun club, an equestrian center, and 75 five-acre home sites. For $275,000, home buyers get a share of the entire acreage, a home site, and access to all facilities, says spokesman Mike Gullatt.

“One of the individuals who is going to become a member is a doctor in the Plano area,” says Gullatt. “He has three or four different high-performance sports cars, and he’s waiting for an Aston Martin to arrive from Europe.”

Even in an area that’s not so wide open, marketers still come up with new extras, such as linking four walls and a ceiling with a limitless artistic universe. Aria, a building in downtown Philadelphia, markets its 114 condos partly through the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, located a block away. Arts patrons can nab information on Aria through television displays at the Kimmel’s coat check, and Aria’s marketing kit includes the Kimmel’s calendar of performances.

Such ideas are still gaining traction around the country but may become more commonplace as a flat market encourages creative thinking.

“It hasn’t hit here yet,” says Todd Britsch, president of New Home Trends, a real estate consulting firm based near Seattle. “But I think it’s an incredible idea.”