If you’ve never heard of the phenomenon before, Christmas hampers offer people a way to afford the food (and gifts, too) by paying them weekly or monthly on a layby (or layaway) system.

The idea is you pay a small amount – say $10, $20 or $50 over a period of time and by the time Christmas rolls around, you’ve got a of mountain food to feed and entertain your army of family and friends arriving during the holiday season that should last, oh, a week. (I wish I’d known about this when I went shopping for food for the 9 guests coming to stay when I hosted Christmas a few years ago. The $320 I spent on food and drink lasted only 3 days – I nearly died it had run out so fast!)

Despite the collapse of the UK Christmas hamper company, Farepak, which paid back only 15p to each of its 120,000 customers, it remains a very economical way to afford a debt-free Christmas.

Unless I just couldn’t find it on Google, there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent American Christmas hamper company. Anyone know of one?

UK shoppers can layby their Christmas goodies with Family Hampers, the biggest one in Canada is Santa’s Choice, while Chrisco in Australia has been running since 1977.

You can buy a number of food hamper options but as an example, Chrisco’s biggest food hamper is the Mega Hamper at $1,172.60,  Family Hamper’s Empire runs at GBP517.50, while the Colossal Christmas from Santa’s Choice costs $CA1075.00.

Obviously, the longer you leave it, the higher the weekly or monthly direct debit amount becomes. Still – much cheaper than forking out effectively a thousand bucks at the supermarket in December!

The cut-off dates for final payments to Chrisco and Santa’s Choice is 22 October 2010 while Family Hamper’s final cutoff for payment is 1 November 2010.

Three in four homebuyers receive nada, zip, nothing at all from their real estate agents as a thank you for shelling HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars, but more than six in 10 homebuyers would use them again and recommend them to others looking to buy a home if they did.

The Real Estate Agents Gifts Survey conducted online by It’s In The Stars found that if you want that bottle of champagne to celebrate your massive purchase, you’ll be much more likely to receive it once you’ve bought oh, three homes or more.

Overall, only 26% of homebuyers received a gift from their real estate agent with the first homebuyers the least likely to receive anything. Ironically of course, if you kept them sweet from the start, they might recommend to their friends who are in the market for a house, consider you for their second, third and holidays homes…but no.

Homebuyers were instead more likely to receive gifts the more homes they had bought. Of the 38% who had bought one home, only 37% of those had received a gift. This rose to 43% for the 23% who had bought two homes, and to 51% to the 39% who had bought three homes or more.

Wine or champagne is the most gift most given (31%), followed by food hampers (13%), flowers and plants (11%), homewares (10%), promotional items thoughtfully including the real estate agency’s logo and personalised gifts for the homebuyer and/or their family (9% each) and gift certificates (8%).

Of those who did receive gifts, 53% said they cost under $50, 26% estimated $50-$100, 16% guessed $100-$200 while only a lucky 5% received gifts valued at over $200.

So – who’s more generous? Boutique firms or the major franchises? Seventy percent of respondents used a major franchise, 22% a boutique firm while 8% dealt directly with the vendor. I was surprised to discover that homeowners were more likely to receive a gift from a major franchise  than a boutique firm (47% vs 34%).

The major franchises were more likely than the boutique agencies to give gifts under $50 (58% vs 50%) but none of the boutiques gave gifts worth over $200 while the 8% of the franchise agents did. Smaller agencies were much more likely than the franchises to spend a mid-price range of $50-$200 (50% vs 32%).

While it is obviously better for the agent to give something rather than nothing at all, if he or she chooses the gift wisely, it could be worth hundreds of thousands of commission in referrals.

The survey found 81% of homeowners would tell their friends, family and colleagues what gift/s they received, 63% would use that agency again when they next bought a house, and 61% would recommend them to others in the house-hunting market if their real estate agent gave them a thank-you gift.