23 Redfinnians Become Vice President for a Day

Earlier this month, Janelle sent out an email to the entire Seattle office soliciting people to build on last year’s hit costume of Donald DeSantis dressed as Rob McGarty by getting as many people as possible to dress as Scott Nagel, VP of Real Estate and affectionately known as “The Silver Fox.” She hatched the plan with a short email “We found a great deal on Silver Fox wigs. We are ordering as many as it takes, but you need to give mykie the full amount of $11.25 by end of day Wednesday to make it happen.” Followed by this picture.

We counted 23 Silver Fox impersonators at our annual Halloween costume contest today, but the real surprise was that the real Silver fox out foxed the fake foxes by dressing as Janelle.

We had a great turn out with almost the entire Seattle office in costume.

Scott and Mary “Bearded Lady” Black tied for first place and the best Nagel impersonation went to Corey “Well whaddaya gonna do” St John.

What’s Your Biggest Fear?

And I’m not talking about financialphobia, but Ophidiophobia and Alektorophobia.

There’s an interesting discussion in Redfin Forums about which, if any, animals are acceptable neighbors.

stillsearching is terrified of snakes, but not chickens. BadKittyM is the exact opposite. Then there’s mzmeshell with a $8,000-lizard-meets-shovel tale.

What about you? Would you cozy up to bobcats or Komodo dragons?

My friend Stacy was freaked out about neighborhood raccoons lurking around her children, ready to bite. The solution was simple. Her mom had been secretly feeding them three meals a day and agreed to stop. They scampered off to another sugar mama.

Tell us your animal tails.

(photocredit: Animal Outfitter)

Livin’ La Vida Guava

There’s a home for sale in Foothill Ranch, California that looks custom-painted for Elle Woods, Barbie, Angelyne or Paris Hilton.

Some witty Forums posters are having fun with this one (TrabucoDom – thanks for the tip!):

• “Now I can safely say I have a good idea of what it would be like to live inside a guava.” writes BadKittyM …  “Just be happy it’s not the inside of an avocado,” ToadB shoots back.
• “I think it is the pepto dismal home!,” pens TracucoDom.
• “Paris Hilton would say ‘that’s hot!’,” comments stillsearching.
• Helyes_Lopez claims, “I saw Angelyne in her pepto dismal pink Corvette the other day. She made an offer on the property just the other day.”
• “Barbie foreclosed, too!,” writes teachere.

There were a couple people who liked the pretty-in-pink paint calling it “AMAZING” and better than the “sad snow white kitchens.”

But Talyssa was the only one to look under the paint … now, I dare you to resist the urge to take a peek.

Why Do I Love This Photo?

Pawing through Redfin’s Facebook page for some employee pictures we could use to decorate a jobs flier, I came across this little beauty:

It was taken at a Red Carpet home-buying class (which has become a huge hit, usually with over 100 attendees). Why do I love this photo?

1. The main character is wearing a polka-dot shirt and what appears to be a pocket-square.
2. He is gesturing with a half-eaten burrito.
3. He looks insanely charged. We were supposed to ask everyone’s permission before taking photographs. I wonder what we asked him?
4. The person to his right, Redfin’s Marco Vargas, is trying to maintain a traditional pose, smiling dutifully.
5. The person to his left seems genuinely amused. I love her smile. She must be his friend.

Any guesses on what’s really going on here?

Field Agent Files: the Chamber of Secrets

It takes a lot to freak out tattooed, motorcycle-riding — but sweet as apple pie — Redfin field agent Daren Carper. Most of the homes he visits are your typical freshly painted, ready-to-move in pads. But sometimes things get a little creepy. 

It’s sunset and Daren and his client are touring a 100-year-old mansion in a posh part of town. From their first steps on the creaky, semi-rotted front porch, it was obvious that the place hadn’t been updated or well-maintained for decades. Cue Daren …  

Inside we found original wood floors that were warped and buckled, and high-vaulted ceilings that made the creaky floors echo throughout the house. We explored the house and found several issues that seemed to come from neglect – the house felt like a mausoleum that hadn’t been touched since the 70s. That, combined with the fact that it was an old house, was already starting to make me feel a little creeped out. 

We started to explore the outside of the house hoping to find an exterior basement access that might have washer and dryer hookups, and also give us a chance to see what the wiring and plumbing looked like. We found a rotted access hatch on the side of the house, and went underneath the mansion to explore the unfinished basement. The ceilings were about five-and-a-half feet high, and spider webs threatened to strangle us wherever we went; if the house hadn’t been touched in 30 years, nobody had been in the basement for about 50. 

There was no light in the basement, so I was cowering behind my four-D-cell Mag-Lite trying to see what was down there. My client had has hand on my shoulder, and was just steps behind me. The image of one of those horror movies comes to mind where you are yelling “DON’T GO IN THERE!” at the screen, but the characters in the movie are too stupid to hear your advice – in our case the curiosity was just too much. 

My flashlight caught a shadow of something interesting in the back corner of the unfinished basement. Fighting our way through the fallen insulation and spider webs, we continued further underneath the house. My flashlight caught an out-of-place wall in the basement. As we got closer we realized that it was not only a wall, but a full room. Again, curiosity got the better of me, and with my hand shaking I reached to open the door. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was ready to swing my flashlight like Babe Ruth. 

We found a single folding chair with a bare-naked lightbulb swinging overhead — a 40-year-old abandoned torture chamber in the basement of a mansion in a nice neighborhood (picture the James Bond torture-chair scene in Casino Royale). I felt my client’s grip on my shoulder tighten, and I quickly swung the flashlight around to make sure nobody was rushing from the shadows with some ancient medieval weapon. As far as I could tell we were alone. My client leaned over and whispered “This is f*ing creepy!!! Let’s get the hell out of here!!!” and we bolted. Finally our curiosity was satisfied, and we were able to run from the house without looking back. 

What’s your creepiest, wackiest, wildest home-tour tale? Redfin’s field agents tour homes day in, day out, so we have plenty more to share if you’re too shy. Maybe next time we’ll tell you about a tour in Wonderland, minus the hookah.

Cheating with Redfin

While in general we believe that more information is better, we recently learned how the information on our website can be used for indecorous purposes. The winner of DC Metrocentric’s most recent PriceChecker competition used Redfin to look up the price of a DC condo, rather than make a guess. DC Metrocentric is a blog about housing and development in and around Washington, DC. We’re fans of their PriceChecker series in which they profile a property and ask readers to guess the price. After a few days, they reveal the listing price and a winner based on the closest guess. The property profiles are great, especially if the property has an animal skin rug.

The winner of the latest PriceChecker found the list price on Redfin. In the comments, Roy, the winner, admits he used Redfin to get the price. Fransie wants Roy’s “PriceChecker Crown revoked.” Clearly the commenters are having fun with this. While we’re glad that Roy uses Redfin and was able to find the property, we hope this doesn’t lead to the downfall of the PriceChecker series. What do you think? Cheating or smart research?

Photo credit: laffy4k on Flickr.

Attack of the Clones

Most of us spend our lives trying to forget the world we had imagined for ourselves as children. But occasionally a single act is so transcendently shameless that it makes us feel happy and human again. For example: an indignant would-be competitor in Arizona just asked an online real estate forum for help getting his money back on an effort to clone Redfin.

My name is Ron Park and I have been working with a service provider, TechnoUSA, from Houston/India to create my real estate mash-up site. My project on getacoder.com was for a Redfin.com clone, in all functionalities and appearance. They were supposed to finish the site by January 25th, 2008 but yesterday, 4/24/08, I told them I’m through with them. The site is nowhere near being a Redfin clone, and they’ve just been problematic from the start. I have given this company a total of $10,500; and the amount of money I can possibly retrieve back with these credit card disputes is $8,500… the agreement was for a Redfin clone. [the emphasis is ours]

It is one thing to copy another site, another to copy it letter for letter, yet another to publicize matter-of-factly your efforts to clone it, and still yet another to feel wronged for what you have done.

To process Mr. Park’s refund, the credit card company is asking for “a letter from another reputable merchant or service provider supporting your claim.” So far, no one has come forward. In fact, we were gratified to see other folks leap to our defense. One respondent said you could never build Redfin.com for $10,000; the true cost is apparently closer to $40,000 (which is what one of our engineers costs over three months).

The clone site copies Redfin right down to the Sweet Digs link in the footer and the message we display while fetching listings. Reviewing the site, it’s hard not to wonder if the developers had ever heard of “search and replace”: many Tareu.com pages still encourage visitors to work with Redfin. But it was the one original element that turned out to be our favorite touch: “Copyright 2008 TAREU.COM.”

What’s amazing is that these guys aren’t even the first Redfin clones. That honor belongs to Allcheckdeals, an online brokerage in India run by naukri.com. Allcheckdeals copied Redfin right down to our graphics, albeit with a Groucho-Marx style disguise:

Here, courtesy of Sellsius blog, are the graphics Redfin was running at the time:

Many thanks to Morgan Carey, CEO of Real Estate Webmasters, for bringing this to our attention. Mr. Park participated in the Real Estate Webmasters’ forums but is not a Real Estate Webmasters customer.

“I Can Assure You, You Will Be Going Through a Metal Detector”

The credit meltdown took a strange turn when Sallie Mae lost $3 billion in market value after an apparently ad hoc Wednesday conference call between CEO Alfred Lord — who had already begun selling his own stock — and analysts. The New York Times described it as perhaps the worst performance since Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling called a financial analyst an anus for having the temerity to ask for a balance sheet.

Among Mr. Lord’s choice responses, as selected by the New York Times:

• Responding to his first question, on how Sallie Mae would restore its credit rating: “You’re talking to the wrong guy… I don’t know that answer.”
• On announcing a shareholder meeting next month: “I would suggest maybe you get there early because I can assure you, you will be going through a metal detector.”

The best exchange that the Times did not have space to cover was a question from Bill Cavalier of Société Genéralé, who had to explain to the CEO how banks sell Sallie Mae’s loans, and why financial analysts would want to know if there’s a market for selling those loans.

Cavalier: …you’ve got to give us some guidance, you’ve got to give us some numbers. I don’t even see a margin number here for the stuff that you’ve done. Can you give us some handle on what your stock is worth?

Lord: You should give Steve [McGarry, Managing Director Sallie Mae Investor Relations] a call.

Cavalier: But you’re the CEO. You’re the guy who just took over the company.

Lord: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I’m the CEO. You should give Steve a call. Next question.

The call ended with the operator asking if there were more questions, followed by Lord saying, “How good is this? Steve, let’s go. There’s no — no questions.” Then came the expletive.

Thanks to a Friend of Redfin for sending us the New York Times article, and to all our friends who have supported us in 2007. Happy holidays!

Bonus link: Redfin co-leads a USA Today story about real estate and the Internet.