Social-distancing restrictions across the province are limiting sales centre capacities and holding up launch events for new construction home projects. Working within these challenging limitations, homebuilders are finding new ways to sell and market their homes online.
This week, Canadian homebuilder Cardel Homes launched an online closed auction for three of its single-family properties located in Ottawa’s Kanata community. Buyers can place one bid on any of the pre-selected floorplans, so long as they have a mortgage pre-approval and put down a $1,000 deposit. The auction kicked off on Tuesday, March 9th at noon.
“You know we can buy a car online, why can’t we buy a house online?” said Tanya Buckley, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cardel Homes, in a recent interview with CTV News Ottawa. “And I think, as home builders, we just haven’t conceived of it, packaged it up, offered it.”
There are three detached, single-family homes up for grabs — The Paloma, The Auden and The Sutton. Before placing their bid, prospective buyers can review floorplans, images and detailed features of each home. Winners will also be able to customize their home’s exterior and interior colours, according to the auction’s website. The properties, which range from 2,014 to 2,442 square feet in size, will be move-in ready by spring 2022. The opening bid for each residence starts from $785,723, $764,949 and $833,560, respectively.
Participants are required to email their mortgage pre-approval documents to Cardel Homes before submitting their offer and deposit on the property of their choice. The three winners will be notified shortly after the auction closes. Runners-up will be alerted within 24 hours and held in reserve until the winning contracts are closed. Unsuccessful bids will have their deposits refunded, according to the auction website.
Selling real estate online is becoming increasingly common in the COVID-19 era. New construction developers have taken to using online sales platforms to launch condo projects, while agents in the resale market now frequently conduct showings and virtual open houses over live streams.
“It’s really the same product, just packaged up a little differently,” said Buckley to CTV News Ottawa. “The demand has become so high. We’re looking at that resale market model and saying, this is what people have been doing in the resale market, we’re sort of looking at that for the new home market.”
The bidding process closes at noon on Friday, March 12th.
