The challenge for realtors, in sluggish markets, is getting customers to pull the (proverbial) trigger.
But Ben Edsall, a Kansas City realtor, may have the solution: his "Buy a house, get a gun" promotion.
Edsall's firm, Turn-Key Properties LLC, is offering customers vouchers, worth $250, redeemable at The Olathe Gun Shop. (The offer is valid on sales of property in Kansas of $100,000 or more.)
"I love guns, I love real estate. I've found a way to combine them," Edsall told the Kansas City Real Estate Examiner.
Edsall had already been offering a 1% discount to NRA members, which he described as "a way to say thank you for being our client and maybe help along another part of our economy, the gun dealers." Now the part of our economy that needs the help is real estate. (Guns sales are at historic highs.)
According to his website, Edsall is a graduate of the Kansas City Crime-Free Drug-Free Multi-Housing Program and the Kansas City Citizens Police Academy.
If you list a rental property with him, he says, he'll use his law enforcement skills to screen out potential tenants who may be doing drugs. And if a tenant does make, sell, or use drugs, he says, his "testimony is usually all that is required" to have the tenant evicted, given his ability to pick up "the smell of narcotics in the unit."
But there's no indication he'll show up at the unit with his gun -- unless you count the sign in his office, which warns, "We don't dial 911."
Who said realtors don't mean business?
