Man sells house with FREE BMW!

6:50am Saturday 11th October 2008

A Bradford house has been put up for sale with a black 330M BMW sport coupe thrown in as the seller bids to find a buyer in the economic gloom.

Mortgage advisor David Batty, a former Marine, wants to move to Devon but to finance his dream he needs to sell his four-bedroom detached home in Wibsey.

He said: “The children have flown the coop, and I’m a single guy, so it seemed the ideal time to make a change.

“I thought that by offering the car I would differentiate my house from others. You could say that if you buy my car for £235,000 you get a four-bedroom house thrown in for free.”

It is a move that Simon Wright, a partner at the Leeds office of estate agents Carter Jones, approves of. He said: “While the current period of change is unfamiliar to the newest generation of vendors, others are looking at new and unusual ways of selling.”

Other incentives being offered by people selling homes include a two-bedroom flat in Bradford that comes complete with a 42in plasma television.

“We’ve also had one vendor who was offering £3,000 of Ikea vouchers,” said Anthony Smith, negotiator at Bairstow Eves.

Peter Leadbeater, of agents Dacre, Son & Hartley, has seen a number of incentives offered by buyers.

He said: “Littlebeck Hall in Bingley is a prime example. The five-bedroom home is offered with a contribution of £1,500 towards the purchaser’s mortgage for 12 months.”

Others who are down-sizing are breaking housing ‘chains’ by buying a house at the bottom of the process to free up other house moves.

Mr Wright said innovation could be the key to getting a successful sale in the present economic climate.

He said: “Although there are no sure fire ways to sell your property in the current climate, we’re finding that the more entrepreneurial vendors are certainly getting themselves noticed.”

One agent of apartment sales said some developers are giving discounts of up to 15 per cent on new-build apartments in Bradford city centre after a recent survey by property website mouseprice.com showed city centre flats dominating the list of areas with the biggest annual fall in prices.

Sheikh Mani Waheed, managing director of Squarefoot Apartments, said: “Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester are getting higher levels of depreciation because they are mature markets and are saturated but, in Bradford, there’s still a lot of inward investment to come and we are in the early stages of regeneration.

“Investors and owner occupiers are playing a ‘wait and see’ game in Bradford to see if the market will turn.

“Some developers will only give five per cent discounts, but others are giving 15 per cent because they might have four or five apartments left in a scheme and want to get rid of them.”

e-mail: sue.ward @telegraphandargus.co.uk

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