Now, buy a villa and get an apartment free!

The ‘Buy 1 Get One Free’ offer has made its way into property purchase as well. And this time around, the freebie is not a car park or a modular kitchen, but much more than that!

Modern and Creative, a unit of the Martin Group of companies, for instance, has made an offer tempting the buyer to invest in a villa promoted at Ganapathy in Coimbatore and get an apartment at Saravanampatti for free.

“With new developments proving hard to sell and inventory aplenty, we decided to come up with this offer,” says Charles Martin, the Managing Director of the Group.

The group intends to restrict this offer to 20 bookings.

“We have so far got seven bookings. Even this is a good start for us,” Charles told Business Line.

“The villa, priced at Rs 1.55 cr (excluding registration fee) would have a built-up area of 2,100 sq feet. The project located at Ganapathy is coming up on 6 acres of land; we intend to develop 99 plots. Of these, 32 plots have been earmarked for construction of row houses in the sub-Rs 50 lakh range, and the rest would be promoted as premium villas.

“We will do 28 villas in the first phase. Construction is yet to start, but from the date of commencement of this project, we will complete it in 12 to 14 months,” he said.

Asked what made the group come up with such an offer, he said “we wanted to kick-start the market. It has been quite dull for over two years now and we did not want to hold too much inventory”.

The apartment that is being offered for free is a single-bedroom flat worth Rs 16 lakh.

When asked how developers could sell premium villas when there were no takers for apartments priced at half the rate of a villa, he said “there are people who prefer to relocate to a gated-community after living for ages in their ancestral homes/ bungalows. Such people would prefer a villa to an apartment. Then there are those that have spent decades abroad, saved enough to invest in a property here,” he said.

“We cross-checked with a couple of other property developers here about the market and were told that it was indeed 'bad'.”

Banks meanwhile seem to be doing their bit by organising property expos in association with developers.