People aren’t buying condos like they used to and that means marketers have to get creative.
For instance, how would you get first time buyers without much savings to buy in a new building with no parking available?
Trade their old car in for a 2% down payment!
Car for a Condo lets car owners trade in their vehicles towards a condo unit in the gritty but fast-gentrifying neighbourhood just west of Main.
“Cars are a terrible asset,” said Cam Good, president of real estate marketing firm Key Marketing.
“For someone trying to get started in life and wanting to become a homeowner, taking a depreciating asset and literally turning it into an appreciating asset is a life-changing decision.”
The low buy-in of $5,400 is possible thanks to a two-per-cent down payment program offered by Vancity.
It allows qualified buyers to shell out only two per cent of, say, a $269,800 one-bedroom, 519-square-foot unit — although monthly payments will be required over the next 16 months of construction to get the buyer to at least a five-per-cent deposit before the building is completed in 2016.
We’re still waiting for the offer that lets you trade in your used helicopter as a down payment on a new condo in Whiterock or the one that lets you trade in your imaginary foreign investor parents on a new unit in the gritty but fast-gentrifying neighbourhood downtown near the Granville street bridge.
