Builder price guarantees moving to high-rise condominiums

Most of the recent price guarantees offered by volume builders such as KBHome, Ryland and others have been focused on single-family neighborhoods. Now a builder of a high-rise hotel-condominium project (the first in the region to seek LEED green building certification) is doing the same in Seattle, WA -- an area that certainly hasn't been as hard hit by the housing downturn as most of California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida.

So why are they doing this? To move absorption at a time when buyers around the country remain on the fence. From a recent press release:

New buyers at the Olive 8 luxury hotel/condominium will receive a guarantee that the price they pay for their home will be the lowest price offered. This is the first guarantee of its kind in this area by a condominium developer...

The legal addendum to the purchase and sale agreement says that if the same floor-plan within Olive 8 ‘s remaining inventory sells for less than the current price prior to closing, the buyers who contracted for a higher price home will benefit at closing with the equivalent discount to their price...

Olive 8 is a 39 story luxury hotel/condominium building, with the lower17 floors occupied by the Hyatt at Olive 8 and 230 condominium homes on the top 22 floors. It’s the first hotel/condominium project in Seattle to seek LEED™ certification (seeking silver). The hotel will open in December, 2008 and condominium buyers will begin move-ins during January, 2009.