Perk-a-palooza Developers Offer Increasingly Unconventional Incentives to Apartment Buyers

Perk-a-palooza
(iStock.com)

In a residential real estate market that is getting more crowded with high-end luxury properties, developers are devising ways to attract potential apartment buyers. As one example, firms like Extell have offered more intuitive bonuses such as three-to-five years’ worth of paid common charges.

But other developers are embracing outside-the-box methods to make a sale.  

For instance, developer Woodbridge Homes reportedly offered a year’s supply of avocado toast to anyone who bought a unit in its KIRA condo development in West Coquitlam, Vancouver, British Columbia during the first weekend in May when sales opened. Avocado toast has become a popular online punchline and a catch-all for the many accusations levied at millennials for their supposed extravagant spending. But the offer is apparently legitimate: the developer will provide a gift card worth the price point of 52 avocado toast orders to a local restaurant for qualifying home buyers. 

And this is only the most recent of these abstract incentives.  Jersey City Urby boasts workshops for residents to learn Feng Shui and floral arranging  in a corner bedroom space dubbed the 'Urby Creative Lab.'

For several years now, 111 Murray Street -- a collaboration between developers Fisher Brothers, Witkoff and New Valley -- has promised residents a handy private jet concierge. Need to be in Dubai within 48 hours? If you have at least $2 million handy, you can live in a building that will arrange that for you.

Then there’s the $85 million duplex that comprises the entire 45th floor of the Atelier building in Manhattan. Apparently the owner wanted to unload the 15,000-square-foot, 10-bedroom/11-bathroom pad enough to sweeten the pot with enticing incentives: two Rolls Royce Phantoms, a Lamborghini, court-side tickets for the Brooklyn Nets, a seasonal Hamptons manor, and… space travel. Yes, the acquisition of this space brings along access to more space, namely the outer version, via two $250,000 seats on a Virgin Galactic flight from Earth’s atmosphere.

It just begs the obvious question: what will they think of next?

MIke Odenthal is a staff writer at The Cooperator.

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