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June 10, 2019

Vancouver condo developers offer free wine or year’s supply of avocado toast to woo buyers

 

 

As reported in The Globe and Mail, it wasn’t that long ago that prospective homebuyers in Vancouver would line up for hours to get into condo presale events or face off in heated bidding wars for a chance to buy property in one of the country’s hottest housing markets.

The heady days are gone, and buyers now have more control in the market, a shift that has some developers resorting to creative gimmicks like a year’s supply of avocado toast in an effort to appeal to buyers.

“It’s a slower, more competitive market,” said Brad Jones, vice president of development at Wesgroup Properties, a Vancouver-based real estate development company.

Prior to the August 2016 implementation of the foreign buyers’ tax in Vancouver, condominiums in Metro Vancouver were firmly in seller’s market territory, defined by a sales-to-active-listings ratio of more than 20 per cent for several months in a row, according to data from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

But even condos proved unable to remain impervious to multiple government intervention measures. The ratio dropped from peaks of over 80 per cent to below 22 per cent in September 2018, where it’s stayed since. If it dips below 12 per cent for several months, it becomes a buyer’s market and prices tend to come down.

As the market slowed, condos began to take longer to sell, hitting 40 days or more on average between December 2018 and February 2019 — the highest since the board started releasing the figure in its monthly market report in September 2016.

“The onus is on us to show we have the most attractive offering,” said Jones of the new reality.

Condos at one Wesgroup’s newest developments, Mode in Vancouver’s southern Killarney neighbourhood, come with a promise of a free glass of wine a day for a year. That incentive comes as a $1,500 gift card to a neighbourhood wine and alcohol store, which equates to about $29 a week to spend on a bottle of wine.

Keep reading in The Globe and Mail

 


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