A Smart gift arrives for best-selling Beazer Homes staff in Charleston

It's not often you see grown men and women tooling around in a car on the front lawn of a new house.

But the Beazer Homes staff had a good reason: the Charleston division won a tiny, trendy Smart car for posting the best sales nationwide in a recent "eSmart Homes" promotional campaign.

The builder held a luncheon in late July at its sales model in the new Bolton's Landing neighborhood west of the Ashley. Among the guests was Mike Furlow, Beazer chief operating officer. The Smart car was a main attraction, and a few employees took it for a spin around the block and even onto the grass.

To win the car, Charleston placed first of 30 divisions across the country during the five-day eSmart blitz earlier this summer. To gauge production, Beazer compared the divisions' sales with their budgets. The Charleston division's total value of homes sold was 185 percent of its budget. The local group, which has 35 employees, gets to keep the two-seater Smart fortwo model for a year.

Charleston division president Frank Finlaw cited a number of factors for Charleston finishing on top. "We got a good product and a great sales team," he says.

Read more in tomorrow's editions of The Post and Courier.