Looking for a new condo?
If you are it looks like you’re getting to be a rarer species and to catch your eye marketers are trying all sorts of things short of just dropping the price.
How about a ‘free’ car or $1000 off your monthly payments for a year?
Or if you’re a believer in the power of a good sales person, then a $5000 bonus to the realtor might do it.
These are just a few of the incentives that developers and marketers are using to get attention or avoid going directly to the price drop.
But are these hard sell techniques working? And will they help kick start a sagging industry?
“We have to be careful before saying ‘the sky is falling,’” says Diana McMeekin of real estate marketing firm Artemis. “What we’re seeing in the market today is a response to the shift from speculators to long-term investors. The kinds of people that are buying now are owner-occupiers as opposed to ‘flippers.’”
For that demographic, real estate is “less of a commodity and more of a home. Their decisions are often more measured,” she says, and they are more likely to be enticed by deals. “Their decisions are more emotional and less about dollars and cents.”
While Ms. McMeekin says our condo market is not as glutted as Toronto’s, she still advises clients that in a competitive market, especially in areas such as Metrotown and Richmond, “you need to have a promotion or special offer every day – just like in the retail business.”
Read the full article in the Globe and Mail.
