Facing Weaker Home Sales, Builders Sweeten Deals

The condo build-up has led to another change in the market, local real estate agents said. Builders and condo developers who did not need the cooperation of agents when people were camping out in front of sales offices are now courting those same go-betweens.

"Agents are getting bombarded every day now with e-mail from builders, condos especially, offering big commissions and bonuses," said Patricia Kennedy of W.C. & A.N. Miller Cos. in Chevy Chase.

Tuscany Condominiums, a Bozzuto Homes project near Landmark Mall in Alexandria, for example, enticed agents in mid-November with an e-mail headlined: "Here's how we say 'grazie' (thank you) to our Realtor partners!"

The e-mail offered a 3 percent commission for any sale, a Gucci gift certificate for two sales, a trip to the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas for four sales and a trip to Italy for eight sales.

Developer PN Hoffman of the District, whose luxury condo projects have routinely sold out before construction, has surprised some agents by inviting them in and offering buyers a $5,000 closing credit on the Chase Point Condominium in Friendship Heights.

A December survey of 407 builders by the National Association of Home Builders showed 62 percent are offering incentives, compared with 58 percent in September and 51 percent six months ago. Forty percent of those surveyed are including optional items at no charge and 33 percent are paying closing costs or fees. Twenty-five percent were even cutting prices, which many builders said they avoid because it angers earlier buyers.

G. Cory DeSpain, who oversees home building in Virginia and Maryland for Pennsylvania-based Toll Brothers Inc., said: "I don't cut prices. I have to try to protect the value of my homes that I already sold and that people are already living in."

Real estate agent Candyce Clanton of Re/Max Allegiance in Fairfax said: "For the past two years, I couldn't find a builder who would allow investors in because they were afraid they'd flip the properties. . . . Now we get e-mails every day saying, 'Come on, bring your investors, bring them back.' Now they're begging them to buy."