Can’t sell your home? Offer a coupon as one homeowner did in Florida in order to sell his home. Realtor Rusty Gulden came up with the idea rather than lower the price of the home $1 million, just make up a $1 million coupon.

In an effort to cut through the gloom in the luxury real estate market, Gulden has been running an ad in the Palm Beach Daily News. “FREE $1,000,000 with this coupon,” the ad reads. “Offer expires May 31, 2009.”

Gulden is trying to sell a 2,000-square-foot unit at the Sun & Surf condo at 100 Sunrise Blvd. in Palm Beach. The asking price was $3.7 million, but it’s a mere $2.7 million with the coupon.

Gulden says tough times call for attention-grabbing marketing gimmicks.
“The volume is significantly off — you don’t need a Ph.D. in finance to know that,” Gulden says.

Since the ad started running earlier this month, she says, “I’ve been busier than a one-armed paper hanger showing it.”

Seller John K. Kearney paid $1.65 million for the unit in 2004, according to property records.

The property Gulden advertised had been on the market for two years, she said. The owner, a Massachusetts resident who was selling because he “just wasn’t using the property,” agreed to shave a $1 million off the asking price if the house could sell in May.
Gulden created a black and white ad offering a “free $1 million” to anyone buying the property. An ad designer at the Palm Beach Post bordered the ad with dashes and a small scissor.

Gulden said she saw more calls on the property and even received an offer from a New York buyer within the month.

“It wasn’t just another ad,” Gulden said.

Million dollar coupons are yet another side effect of a high-end market that is over-saturated with homes and burdened by higher loan interest rates, said Walter Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors