Consolation Freebies

I was reading the news yesterday and the foreclosure rate in my city skyrocketed. Hm...not that surprising. Since we all know how the Big Three are doing lately.

A few days ago, I received a real estates junk letter. There were two pictures that caught my eyes. The first one, featuring a home for sale, has a banner across the picture of the home. And the message is "Buy this home and get a free ipod nano." And the other one is "Buy this home and get a $300 Home Depot gift certificate."

Probably the real estates agent needs to put in more efforts in market research. If I'm going to buy a house today, I think I can also afford an ipod. Besides, an 8GB ipod nano is $249 and the national median existing home price in the mid-west is about $178,000. So the freebies is only 0.14% of the value of the house. I know it does take some creativity to get people to buy a house around the market price (especially in my area) right now. However, does giving away an ipod really attract a home buyer?