Buy a Home This Way, Get Up to $5K From Amazon

In the form of Amazon goods, services
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 24, 2019 5:04 PM CDT
Amazon Is Getting Into the Real Estate Business, Sort Of
This Oct. 23, 2018, file photo shows an Amazon logo atop the Amazon Treasure Truck at The Park DTLA office complex in downtown Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

You can buy almost anything on Amazon, except maybe a new house ... right? Well, now you sort of can, thanks to the company's new partnership with Realogy, the largest residential real estate brokerage company in the US. Alongside Amazon, Realogy, which owns such well-known brands as Century 21 and Coldwell Banker, created TurnKey, which you can access at Amazon.com/TurnKey if you're looking to purchase real estate in one of, currently, 15 cities covered by the program. Answer some quick questions, and a Realogy representative will call you. Buyers who are serious are immediately sent on to real estate agents. Forbes notes those agents will be "pre-vetted [and] high-rated." And in a pretty impressive perk, buyers who actually close a deal worth at least $150,000 through Realogy will get a bunch of Amazon goods and services.

Specifically, they'll get a coupon for $450 to $1,500 (the amount depends on how much they spent on a home) for Amazon Home Services, which include things like cleaning, furniture assembly, and unpacking. They'll also get $500 to $3,500 in smart-home products, which will be installed for them; those include things like the Echo Dot, the Echo Show, and the Ring doorbell. To get the full $5,000 from Amazon, buyers must purchase a home for more than $700,000, the Real Deal reports. As the New York Times explains, buyers these days often start their search for a new home online, browsing sites like Zillow, and some of those companies have started "instant buying" programs to cut real estate agents completely out of the home-buying process. "Amazon is now as much a search engine as it is a store," the Times notes, so this is a venture that makes sense for the company—and also encourages buyers to adopt Amazon's own smart products. (More Amazon stories.)

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