I stumbled on something quite interesting the other day, a community in Baltimore where a builder (Beazer) is selling two similar homes for two different prices, one across the street from the other. Its weird until you hear the builder’s justification – Beazer is trying to be fair to the home buyers!
Yes, if you wish to purchase any of the Beazer home plans at the Park at Mount Washington, you have only one constant – how much mortgage you are willing to pay. The land of the community straddles Baltimore City and Baltimore County. City tax is more than twice County tax. So to be fair, Beazer, since it has houses on both sides will sell a County House at one hundred thousand dollars (25%) more than a City Home. Not because the land costs one hundred thousand dollars more, or because labor or even regulations costs that much or that the cost of borrowing to build on county land costs any more than of borrowing to build on city land. Its just that Beazer wants to be fair to the home buyers!
Its a weird reasoning, that is by no means weird to the Sherlock of a builder. And indeed, it is this kind of greed that helped drive the nation’s economy into the ditch in the first place as folks manufactured “value” out of thin air – expanding the whole notion of demand and supply to its farthest extreme. Interestingly, it seems most of the county lot has been built and from the look of things occupancy is quite high. Of course, this fact is not listed on the builders website – you only find out the true story when you get on site.
In my journeys, I have stumbled on a lot of interesting discoveries, but his sure ranks high on the list of disturbing ones.
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