Developer buy-downs the next big mortgage trend?

You’ve heard of brokers buying down rate but how about developers? One is offering a promotion that will allow clients to pay as little as $1 per day to live in its upcoming condo development.

You’ve heard of brokers buying down rate but how about developers? One is offering a promotion that will allow clients to pay as little as $1 per day to live in its upcoming condo development.

WestStone Group -- in partnership with Platinum Project Marketing --  is currently offering a special promotion for the first 200 buyers of its Evolve development in Surrey, B.C. and certain condos can be had for as little as $365 for the first year. The offer is open to all qualifying mortgage holders, regardless of which lender their mortgage is with.

“These kinds of promotions have to be open to everyone or they just don’t work; we make no bones about which lenders clients go to,” Vince Taylor, partner with Platinum Project Marketing told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “Every client is free to use whoever they want.”

The promotion is available for every unit, with a tiered cost structure that offers certain units for $1-$12 per day, depending on the unit size.

Units start at $93,900, and range in size from 316 to 1,294 square feet.

#pb#

“The developer covers the cost … it’s essentially a very aggressive mortgage buy-down. If you can own a piece of real estate for a dollar a day, that’s something that is really remarkable,” Taylor said. “We convinced our developer client to do the buy-down all the way to a dollar a day [for certain units].”

Clients have the option of having the developer pay the lender directly, or taking a rebate off the price of the property.

And according to Taylor, the promotion is open to most buyers who qualify for a “reasonable” mortgage rate.

“I would probably have to put a rate cap of 3.5-4 per cent or something reasonable; I don’t want someone coming in with private money, but we’ve actually never had that problem. People have always been very fair and very reasonable.”