A landlord in New Zealand’s rapidly cooling property market is turning to an unusual way to entice buyers – by offering a free Tesla.
The ad for a new seven-bedroom home on the outskirts of Auckland, the country’s largest city, features a Tesla Model Y, an indication of how long sellers will advertise the homes as rising borrowing costs are hurting demand.
The ad, by real estate agents Barfoot & Thompson, is captioned: “Brand new Tesla and brand new home.”
Aggressive interest rate hikes by central banks around the world have caused a global meltdown in housing markets, with New Zealand being one of the hardest hit. The supply of homes for sale rose 43% year-on-year last month, according to property auction site Trade Me, pushing prices down further.
October residential property prices released by the site on Thursday also show that the asking price for an average home in Auckland fell 3.4% from the same month last year. This follows a broader 7.5% drop in median house prices in October since the same period last year, according to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand.
The slowdown is unlikely to ease any time soon, with the central bank set to continue its one-year tightening cycle later this month and raise the benchmark rate another 75 basis points to 4.25% to contain the slowdown. ‘inflation.
That means sellers have to resort to unorthodox means to promote homes that now take an average of 44 days to sell according to REINZ, nearly double the time it took to sell in early 2021. rare exception, Barfoot & Thompson real estate agent Prince Kapoor, who is selling the property, said he was confident they would get in the area of the asking price of NZ$1.8 million ($1.1 million of dollars).
“It’s been 100% crazy since the ad went out, we’ve been getting a lot of inquiries,” Kapoor said over the phone. “We should sell the property within the week.”
