Offer of Smart Car Creates Buzz Around Houses for Sale
Most people buying houses don’t expect them to come equipped with a car in the garage or driveway.
Rick and Randi Theobald are trying to change that — at least for four houses on Santa Fe’s east side. They’re throwing in a free Smart car as part of the deal.
“We did have a good turnout at the open houses on the weekend,” Rick Theobald said Monday. He couldn’t tell, though, if that was a result of his ad that ran Friday with the lure of the diminutive cars or a result of the Haciendas, A Parade of Homes that brought home buyers and agents out last weekend.
The four homes in which the sellers agreed to the incentive — they’re the ones who would have to come up with the car — range in price from $1.4 million to $2 million.
Now, one would think anyone who can afford to pay that much money for a house isn’t strapped for cash for a car payment.
Theobald readily agreed that’s true.
“In all likelihood, there’s a strong possibility the car never will be given away,” he said. Instead, buyers very well may start negotiating on the price, then say, “Forget the car,” in return for a lower sales price, he said.
So what’s the point? It’s all about buzz. Getting the attention of buyers, and especially of the real estate brokers who represent them.
“There are more than a thou- sand licensed Realtors in Santa Fe,” said Theobald, who, along with his wife, works for Sotheby’s International Realty. “Our job is to find the 100 or 150 brokers who are most seasoned, most active in a particular community ... and to get them thinking about our houses.”
The couple moved to Santa Fe five years ago after buying, remodeling and reselling homes in the Carmel-Pebble Beach area of California, he said. They successfully sold one of the houses after offering a two-year lease on a Mercedes Benz as part of the deal. They made a similar offer with a house in Las Campanas after coming to Santa Fe, but the buyer negotiated a lower price instead, he said.
Call the current offer a downsized version — although the Smart car is indeed a Mercedes product. Theobald put the value of the car at $18,000. Various Web sites list the manufacturer’s suggested retail price at $11,590 to $16,590, depending on the model, but dealers often add mark-ups.
The car is a two-seater, square and eye catching with a profile that, in many European cities, allows it to park nose-in in streetside parallel parking spaces. Its 30-plus-miles-per-gallon efficiency has made it popular overseas, where gasoline prices have been higher than this in country for years, but is catching on here as gas prices have hovered around the $4-per-gallon line.
Theobald said he settled on the car partly for the wordplay it offers in suggesting a “smart” idea.
“It’s a little bit of a symbol of what we all ought to be thinking about, maybe doing with less,” he said, noting that it’s an economical form of transportation in a time of high gasoline prices.
In Santa Fe’s touristcrunched downtown, the car’s ability to squeeze into a tiny parking space might be an equal attraction.
Theobald said the promotion has turned heads. Saturday morning, he and his wife were walking their dogs along Acequia Madre when a car passing by screeched to a stop, a person rolled down the window and shouted, “We want that Smart car!”
All this goes to show that a small car can be used to generate a larger profile.
