The Wierd and the Wonderful

Home seller offers $1,000 in booze to buyer

A grand's worth of food and drink at Grandpa’s Place, the bar across the street, if you buy now!

From: www.msnbc.com

GLENVIEW, Ill.  — Drink for free at the local watering hole and make it home in seconds. That’s what one Glenview, Ill., homeowner is offering as a way to set apart her 3-bedroom townhouse in a down real estate market.

Melanie Gravdal has been struggling to sell the unit, so she's decided to offer a unique incentive to stoke interest: $1,000 worth of food and drink at Grandpa’s Place, the bar across the street, to whomever buys the house.

“We weren’t getting very much traffic because there was so much competition in the market,” said Gravdal, of Glenview, a suburb about 18 miles north of Chicago. “We live in a place where restaurants and bars come within walking distance so we thought this was a way to cross-promote the neighborhood and our homes.”

Gravdal and her husband, who live in the house with their 2-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son, are looking to move back to California.

The family first put their house on the market in June, but with a bevy of similar townhomes in the area, interest was hard to come by. Yet prospects have picked up since she suggested the bar promotion to her realtor, Missy Jerfita, around Labor Day.

“Before the promotion we had two showings in seven weeks," Gravdal said. "Since the promotion, we’ve had nine. It used to be that sellers would make cookies for buyers to show them that they were good. Now the onus is on the seller tosweeten the deal.”

After dropping the price $25,000, the house is currently listed at $450,000, just slightly below the average for a 3-bedroom townhouse. At Grandpa's, fliers for the promotion are posted all over the bar area.

"It’s become kind of a talking point," said Mike Maginot, the general manager at Grandpa's. "As far as whether it’s going to work I don’t know. The rallying point seems to be actually how to spend the $1,000s. The best idea I’ve heard is a family of four coming in once or twice a month, enjoying a meal and going on their way."

Word of the Day

Grand
\ˈgrand\
Origin: Anglo-French grant, grand, large, great, grand, from Latin grandis
First Known Use: 1548
Adjective
1 a: having more importance than others: foremost; b : having higher rank than others bearing the same general designation <the grand champion>
2 a: inclusive, comprehensive <the grand total of all money paid out>; b: definitive, incontrovertible <grand example
3: chief, principal
4: large and striking in size, scope, extent, or conception <grand design>
5 a: lavish, sumptuous <a grand celebration>; b: marked by a regal form and dignity; c: fine or imposing in appearance or impression; d: lofty, sublime <writing in the grand style>
6 a: pretending to social superiority: supercilious; b: intended to impress <a person of grand gestures>
7: very good : wonderful <a grand time>
Noun
1: grand piano
2 plural grand slang : a thousand dollars

More Vocabulary

Bevy: n. a large group or collection
Incentive: n. something that incites or has a tendency to incite to determination or action
Onus: n. Latin burden
Stoke: v. to increase the activity, intensity, or amount of

Idioms & Phrases

To sweeten the deal: to make a bargain or a business transaction more appealing by adding value to the transaction.

• The dealer sweetened the deal by throwing in free car washes.