Buy a house, get a free gun

[Buttercup]

Buy a house, get a free gun
Real estate agent's cure
for slow market – Glock

December 10, 2006




While other real estate agents are responding to the current buyers' market by offering extras like free appliances, televisions, or a weekend in a luxury hotel, one Texas agent is drumming up business by offering a free Glock pistol with any home purchase of at least $150,000 – if you're a police officer.

And Julie Upton, a Houston-area real estate agent, says her idea is working well. With the median single-family home in Houston selling for $146,000, Upton is targeting the center of the market.


"It's attracted a lot of attention," she said of her ads in Badge & Gun, the monthly publication of the Houston Police Officers' Union. Upton's husband has been a Houston police officer for 15 years.

She's already given away two Glock pistols.

"So (the ad) has already paid for itself," she told the Houston Chronicle.

For police officers, Glock offers its weapons at prices ranging from $450 to $550 on the company's website. Home buying cops who don't want another pistol receive a $500 American Express gift check from Upton.

Spokeswoman Franceska Perot of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said Upton's marketing scheme is perfectly legal as long as proper records are kept during the transfer.

"We don't want them falling into the wrong hands," she said

According to criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck, an estimated 2.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes each year, with one in six believing someone would have been dead if they had not resorted to their defensive use of firearms.

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

[TXCharlie]

Wow, that amounts to a two tenths of one percent savings!!!

Pretty smart ad ploy, got her a lot of free publicity I imagine.

[Willowdared]

I'd prefer it the other way around - any chance of that?

[armygrnt502]

Wow..still not enough incentive for me to buy a house in Houston. Now maybe if they threw in an AR15 I might think it over...

[HardNoseBull]

let me get this straight, I pay 150,000 for a glock and they throw in a house, wow thats awsome. In Canada I paid 145,000 for a nice pen and pencil set, and they threw in a house as well. i think the better deal is in texas.

[TXCharlie]

Hard Nose Bull, you also missed the chance at our Honda car dealership a few years ago: Their TV ad said "Buy a Honda car, get a free Honda!!!".

I figured the free Honda must be a used car or motorcycle, which woulda been cool... So I called them, and the free Honda was a $300 Honda lawnmower

I still can't believe I fell for that

[10-42Adam]

You've got to be kidding me...