Whether you are looking at building a home or purchasing a home & land package, it is important to understand your builder’s promotions and special offers.  Now this blog is not going to be about effective marketing offers nor about what makes a good or bad offer.

This is simply about getting a basic understanding of how promotions and special offers work in the world of residential home building.

Offers

There are so many different offers that are available to you as the client across the different many builders.  I won’t be covering every single one of them, however let’s look at the more common offers.

$100 bizzilian OFF

This is probably one of the worst (and this is my opinion of course) type of offers that I see in the market place.  Many reputable builders use this type of promotion where they add $100 dollars (let’s say) to the cost and then take $100 OFF as a special offer.

It’s just smoke and mirrors really.  However if it makes you feel better to get a hypothetical discount, then this is not a bad option to take.

Free Upgrades

Some builders opt to give away free upgrades like:

  • appliances & white goods
  • upgraded stone to your kitchen
  • kitchenette to your alfresco
  • bar to your home
  • etc…

These may be really good if you need these upgrades.  However, once again, you have got to make sure that they are genuine upgrades and they are not simply built into the price and then given away.  So essentially you are paying for them.

Rebates

Other builders sometimes give you a cash back or some sort of a rebate.  It’s important to understand how these rebates work and whether they are genuine giveaway or you are the one who is paying for them anyway.

Rebates can come in many forms:

  • Cash Discounts
  • Cashback
  • Paying something off for you like stamp duty
  • 50% off your home price

Again, some builders may be doing this as a genuine offer but the majority build it in and then give it away.

Reduced Costs

This is another form where the builder can offer you landscape at $1.00 or a pool package for $10.00 dollars.  They can even offer you FREE demolition of your home.

This again, can be a really good offer as long as it’s a genuine offer of course.  Your job is determine whether it is or is not a genuine offer.

Free Giveaways

This is another form of offers that builders tend to use.  Free giveaways come in many forms, including but not limited to:

  • FREE upgrade to blah
  • 1 million FREE upgrades
  • FREE holidays
  • FREE car
  • etc…

Understanding how this offer works within your home build and how your home price & inclusions work is going to be key to your understanding of whether this is a genuine offer or not!

$1 Million in Value @ ONLY $5,999

This is one of my favorite giveaways as it’s really easy to do.  Consider this:

  • Appliances valued at $4,000, but cost the builder $1,500
  • TV valued at $3,000, but costs the builder $1,000
  • 40mm Stone at $4,000, but costs the builder $2,000
  • etc…

Now the above “valued at” are excessive prices where their normal retail is usually less anyway but they can get away by saying “valued at” to make look even better.  Now there is nothing wrong with this as long as you understand the real costs of these items when you are comparing builders & their promotions.

Is it worth it?

I won’t tell you whether a promotion is worth it or not worth it because every promotion is different.  Some are genuine and some are bulls***.  However, here is what I will say:  ignore the special offers and promotions altogether.  When comparing builders, just take the excitement of getting something for free out of the equation completely.

Here is what I suggest you do:

  1. obtain a complete list of your inclusions with all the different promo items that you like
  2. compare the pricing of your shortlisted builders for all these included items
  3. if the price comes super close, then you know the promo is rubbish.

What if the offer is bulls***?

This does not mean anything.  All it means is that you worked out that it is crapp.  It is super important that you do not base your decision when it comes to selecting a builder on “who has a better promotion”.

Rather, base your decision on all the key factors that are important to you and who ticks all of your boxes.  Having an amazing promotion is a dangerous factor to have, but it’s your decision of course.

Finally

It is really important that you understand how special offers and promotions work when it comes to building a brand new homeJust because it is free, it does not mean that it is free.

Having said all that, there are some builders who do genuinely provide discounts and giveaways.  Your challenge is to find out whether your selected builder is one of those.

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