Buy one home and get a second one free
Posted
Jun 03 2008, 08:48 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
The grocery shopper's beloved BOGO -- buy one, get one (free) -- has moved into the realm of home sales. Yes, home sales. In yet another sign of how anxious sellers have become in today's housing market, a San Diego real estate developer has offered a free $400,000 row home to anyone who buys one of his estate homes starting at $1.6 million.
"We want to reduce our inventory," Mark Connal, a vice president at Michael Crews Development, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. "We're prepared to bite the bullet. ... Right now, every builder I know is selling houses at less than it costs to build them."
Another company official, Dawn Berry, was quoted by a San Diego TV station: "We thought, 'Why does it just have to be on Pop-Tarts and restaurants? Why not buy one home, get one free.'" Of course, you'll have to pay property taxes on both.
The houses available for $1.6 million and up are gated estate homes in the San Pasqual Valley. The row homes, in Escondido, once sold for $540,000, according to the Union-Tribune.
A flier at the developer's Web site says, "It's never been done before and may never be done again!" The flier and a post at the company's blog say the offer was good through May 31.
A blog post at L.A. Land about the promotion generated plenty of comments. For instance, reader Greg said: "This is great! It will give me somewhere to park the free SUV I'll get with the purchase of my new hybrid." "steve in k.c." said: "May I default on the first one and then still keep the second one? Thanks in advance. Honey, get the kids, and load the van ... we're moving."
