A luxury condo development in Vancouver, Canada, is hoping to draw in millennial homebuyers — by offering them a year of free avocado toast.
The Kira, which is part of Woodbridge Homes in the West Coquitlam suburb, is the latest Vancouver development slated to open in May. Those who buy one of the development’s 116 units in the first weekend of May will receive a gift card to a local restaurant with money equaling the cost of an avocado toast one day a week for a year.
The less gimmicky part of the deal is that buyers will also be able to pay only a 10 percent deposit on the units, which cost roughly $400,000 Canadian dollars ($290,000 USD). In Canada, a deposit of 15 to 20 percent is standard.
According to MLA Canada marketing manager Kayleigh Johnson, the offer of free avocado toast was specifically chosen to appeal to young homebuyers. (By now, millennials’ love for avocado toast has become both a joke and a common stereotype some use in response to research that shows millennials are struggling to buy homes.)
“I remember when a billionaire went on TV and said that [spending too much on avocado toast] is the reason millennials can’t afford homes,” Johnson told Inman. “We just thought it would be a really fun idea to turn that on its head and be like ‘You can have it all, your home and avocado toast.'”
Time will tell whether the avocado toast offer will be the straw that sways someone to buy a condo. If we assume that a toast costs $15, the total of one a week is equal to $780.
“We definitely don’t think that anybody that wasn’t going to buy now will because of avocado toast,” Johnson said. “The idea was too create a fun PR piece that got people’s attention.”
But the offer certainly sounds yummy. Over the years, developers, agencies and homeowners have all tried a variety of different perks to entice buyers — one brokerage even offered a free Tesla with the purchase of a $2.349 million home while others have tried to throw in small houses in rural parts of Italy and $500 of tacos into the deal.
