Real estate developers in Ontario have taken on a new level of desperation amid a shakey market fuelled by sky-high lending rates; they will literally give you bars of gold just to buy a home.

A new subdivision of single-family detached homes in Woodstock, known as River & Sky, is gearing up to launch — and the project is attempting to lure in buyers with a promotion offering 500-gram gold bars worth a staggering $45,000 a pop to anyone who buys one of these homes.

An email sent out by Royale Realty Point Brokerage — an agency not associated with the project's developers, Fernbrook and Crystal Homes — advertises an upcoming one-day event where they claim the builder is offering purchasers in the subdivision a hefty chunk of gold.

Now we’re giving away gold bars to convince people to buy houses.

This is how to keep housing expensive. The cost of these gold bars and the unfair commissions to agents get passed down to the home buyer. pic.twitter.com/40krlPwQ5q

— Varun Sriskanda (@VarunSriskanda) November 9, 2023

The upcoming sales event on November 18 at the Woodstock Sales Galleria celebrates Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, where gold plays an important cultural role.

Gifts of gold are a tradition on the first day of the five-day festival, known as Dhanteras, based on Hindu mythology, where King Hima's son was spared from a fatal snake bite through a distraction in the form of the sought-after precious metal.

For this reason, gifting gold bars and coins is an established Diwali tradition, though maybe not necessarily $45k worth of the stuff.

A representative of the brokerage behind the email tells blogTO that, while the email was indeed sent out by agents, the gold bar giveaway is actually a promotion being led by the builders.

An agent selling units in the building explained to blogTO that these incentives are a sign of the times, saying "you'll see a lot of developers out there giving out a lot of incentives."

"There are some builders who are giving anywhere from the typical four per cent [gift] that you would get in a pre-construction all the way to 10 per cent... It's there to attract clients to purchase."

The agent says that the industry is navigating a particularly tough market right now, and that Fernbrook and Crystal Homes are not the only builders resorting to such tactics to win over buyers.

blogTO attempted to reach out to the River & Sky team via phone on Thursday morning to confirm the agency's claim that the gold bar promotion is a builder-led initiative, but there has been no answer or callback as of writing.