Many thanks to Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld for publishing an essay this morning on what I’ve learned as a CEO during the downturn. Did anyone notice that the picture of Arnold in “Predator” is strikingly similar to the picture of me?
The premise of the post isn’t that Redfin has found our way out of the woods yet, only that we’ve been in there longer than others; the housing bubble burst a year before the market did. So far, the essay is steadily climbing the del.icio.us charts.
It was originally going to be a top-10 list of tips, but Redfin’s professorial Chris Glew told me that, when interviewing for his first job at Redfin, he had surmised from my blog posts (for DIY PR, financial modeling and startup hardships) that all of his answers should be in the form of a top-10 list.
So, I made a top-9 list instead.
Thanks to Wes, Sylvia and Marc for giving the post a going-over, and to a loyal blog reader — why can’t I find his comment? — for asking why startups are so conservative, which became the point of departure for this latest effort.
Redfin was on Good Morning America today, as promised. The interview was, as always, a blast, and being in a studio was as strange as ever. For some reason, I kept thinking of the children’s book author I had met in a green room on a previous trip. He had written a beautiful little book, and had nothing to worry about. Real estate by comparison seemed so complicated and mercenary.
But then again nothing can make you feel how infinitely varied and desultory life can be like morning television. The star of today’s show was a 44-pound cat, which had entered the building on a red carpet, with ABC interns posing as paparazzi. Competition between the morning programs for the cat interview had, I was told, been fierce. In the green room, the cat tucked into the small feast that been laid out for him.
Diane Sawyer’s producer came in, and looking down at the grazing animal with a mixture of disgust and what may have been wistful envy, asked if the cat had “like, an endocrine problem.” The cat’s handlers, a group of funny Jersey ladies, said, “let’s not go there.”
Barbara Walters came through the studio in a magnificent King-of-the-Mountains-style dress, walking gingerly, with delicate eyelashes and a well-muscled man in a very tight shirt and bleach-blonde hair carrying her purse, to air an interview with Carla Bruni. I’ve been watching her since childhood, and wish I had said hello. It was strange to hear her talking so matter-of-factly about Carla’s orgies. I was interviewed by Diane Sawyer, whose youthful relationship with Henry Kissinger I had also just read about, awestruck.
We ploughed through some questions around some real estate science we’re publishing next week, remembering the advice “not to get into it” with any of the nuances and qualifications we would have dearly loved to make. As soon as the segment was over, the producers swooped in to escort Ms. Sawyer to Bryant Park, filled with teenage girls and already a little sticky with heat, for a production of Rent and a Jonas Brothers concert.
Earlier in the day, I’d asked, “Who’re the Jonas Brothers?” The entire green room fell into shocked silence.
“Dude,” the producer said, apparently having never struggled with the sense of scale that any visitor to New York’s big stage immediately gropes for. “They’re huge.”
For the first time in many, many years, I’m riding in black leather over the East River toward Manhattan. Lamont, the 67-year-old man driving the Towncar, has already explained why he lives in New York: “I love the night life.” He said that he hopes to die at 94, “killed by somebody’s husband.”
He told me about all the bigshots who had sat where I was sitting. His favorite client, Willie Mays, rode with him all over New Jersey, only to pretend to forget him when they ran into each other at a hospital. Mays walked right past Lamont, and told Lamont’s buddy (who had refused to believe Lamont really knew Mays): “He’s a good fella but he don’t where the hell he’s going. We stayed lost that whole day.”
Lamont told me about Charles Barkley, who said about New York: “where else in the f*** can you look at 200 people trying to cross the street and the second they leave, another 200 replace ‘em?”Lamont said he charmed Franco Harris’s wife, and will never again drive Star Jones, for reasons he couldn’t disclose. It’s nice to get a ride.
Last time I came here, I turned down the Lincoln Towncar — and spent 11 p.m. – 2 a.m. waiting for the A train, riding the A train, sobbing on the A train, and, finally & most tragically, watching the A train turn into an Express (to Harlem) just before my midtown stop.
ABC News paid for the car this time – but only after the usual humiliating intimations of poverty from Redfin — and it seems a shame that there’s no one here to have a party with. We’ll be on Good Morning America Friday morning, talking to Diane Sawyer about the science of real estate.
Our theme this time is how you can tell when a seller will give ground on price, and when he’ll stand firm. To get ready, we studied 9,053 records of past sales in Washington, California and Virginia.
Redfin’s Rob McGarty did most of the work, guided by stats man Mose Andre, who recently compared me to the Segway-driving illusionist on Arrested Development, “but in a good way.” (I watched the show for the first time that night and made a mental note: tone it down.)
If you want to watch the show, the hit-time is supposedly 7:45 a.m. (but subject to change). It might be more interesting than the usual interview. Ms. Sawyer has, a producer explained (with a combination of respect and terror), a reputation for spontaneity. I’ll be wearing a loud green shirt with velvet-lined cuffs. Wish us luck.
Many thanks to Ellie, Cynthia and the whole team for their support.
Being on TV is a junkie kind of rush. Even if you’re as stuck up as I am about it, you fall into hoping TV’s magic will transform you during the broadcast into something larger than life. But then you get airbrushed with make-up (new for HD, it feels soft and good), the mic-man publicly undresses you to the navel a minute before the segment starts, and you’re rushed off the set in another two minutes feeling more, not less, inconsequential.
Redfin was on Fox & Friends’ segment this Sunday to talk about our business model (save $10,000!) and to answer the usual questions (we’re not putting anyone out of business). At the end of it I felt a little blue. I walked through the saddest place on earth, a darkened “Geraldo!” set. The streets in midtown Manhattan were empty at 7:30 a.m. I answered an email from a lone Connecticut fan wondering about our expansion plans. I called my mom, and told her my day felt already over. I remembered that a 60 Minutes producer — he was such a prince — once said “everyone is always depressed after the interview.”
Then I got on the 1 subway uptown… and saw people in tank-tops and bibs. A race!
I got back to my room, changed, and ran to Central Park, in what I only then realized was an event for disabled & able-bodied people alike (registration fee paid later).
As usual for Manhattan, folks lined up for the seven-minute-a-mile pace who would almost immediately begin walking, leading to altercations with punier, faster runners. There was a small-voiced, encouraging speech by New York Road Runner’s president Mary Wittenberg and, from the beginning — and all the way through — there was cheering. I LOVE people cheering! Why don’t we do that more often?
And there were so many runners -– I had not thought there could be so many — competing on prosthetic legs, of an age that many must have been injured in Iraq. A large, magnificently muscled man running outside the lane and against the current was yelling, Marine-style: “UP AND OVER, UP AND OVER, COME ON.” It was good to see some of the vets running together. We can never re-pay them. It’s hard not to be almost-scared of the intensity of their experience. But everyone on the course was glad to be doing something with them.
A few racers ran arm-in-arm with their parents, very close to one another, some encouraging me though I should have been the one encouraging them. Melted make-up streamed down my face. And perhaps because I was deranged from trying to run faster than I really could, or because of the cheering, I was overcome with love.
Redfin is appearing on Fox & Friends this Sunday. The “hit-time” is 7:21 a.m. At the moment, I’m in the green room. There is nasty danish here. Redfin is set to air just before a segment on “the world’s ugliest dog.” One of the make-up people in the green room just saw the teaser and said “that dog isn’t THAT ugly.”
Then the room fell silent as the camera swiveled to show a dog that was, for all of its many winning characteristics, very, very ugly. I was glad to see the studio had a recycling bin, but then noticed it was full of garbage. There are many TVs here, ostensibly for piping in news, but the set to my left is showing the original “Planet of the Apes.” I asked the green-room guy who his favorite star was. He said Jerry Springer is “very down-to-earth.” He also liked T.O. “Was he down to earth?” “No,” he said, “I guess not.”
Redfin just showed up in a big USA Today feature which reports that “a growing number of home buyers swear by Redfin, an online start-up in Seattle that has rocked the real estate market.” All day, our phone has been ringing off the hook.
And then a few hours after the article was published, one of our customers chimed in on the USA Today site with his own perspective:
A great idea is one thing, putting it into practice is another. I actually used Redfin to close my first housing purchase well over a year ago. I got great hands-on experience. My Redfin agent was busy at 10pm one night putting in an offer for me because we were in a multiple bid situation and time was running out. Her expertise drafting an escalator clause really paid off. They also sent someone to the property to help coordinate an emergency inspection (one day after the house was on the market). We ended up getting the house and were happy with the service. The best part is that I never felt “sold” or wondered about Redfin’s agents motivation (conscious or subconscious).
On Monday, we looked at what makes a property hot in Boston, so we’re closing the week with a look at a market on the other coast: Los Angeles. The big question: will we see the same trends coast to coast?
We found there really are (hot) pockets of sunshine in the Los Angeles housing market, and this is not according to my trusty Magic 8-ball. We analyzed 2,364 real estate records for single-family listings in Los Angeles County, Calif. that entered the market between Oct. 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008, and sold.
Here’s a rundown of the neighborhoods with the most listings that sold within seven days on the market; the numbers in parentheses calculate the hot properties as a percentage of the total houses that sold in those areas:
Beverly Center, Miracle Mile: 12 (26%)
Brentwood: 12 (27%)
Los Angeles, Southwest: 10 (12%)
Sunset Strip, Hollywood Hills West: 10 (11%)
Westchester: 9 (17%)
For the areas where there were a significant number of hot properties, we compared the listings that sold in seven days or less with everything else that sold in those areas. Our goal was to develop a clear portrait of the hot property, so our buyers would know when they really had to hop to it. And here’s what we found:
Beds and baths were the same for both types: there was no pattern in terms of bedrooms and bathrooms. Hot and “not” (not properties took more than eight days to sell) properties both had three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The coasts agree!
Hot properties are bigger, slightly: The median square footage for hot properties was only slightly larger (.2%) than not properties, but the median lot size was 3% larger. Clearly, the LA sprawl doesn’t mean buyers get more space. Boston homebuyers got 13% larger lots with pretty similar sized homes – 1,669 square feet in Boston vs. 1,735 square feet in LA.
Hot properties are newer: the median year built (1948) for hot properties was four years later than for the nots. Bostonians bought slightly older homes, but maybe that’s because most east coast homes are older?
Hot properties are expensive: it turns out that hot properties weren’t exactly priced to move. In fact, the median list price of hot properties ($1.1 million) was 16% higher. And the high price isn’t just because the houses are bigger: the median dollars per square foot was nearly 16% higher for hot properties ($633) as compared to the nots ($548). The median list price of Boston’s hot properties was $459,000 … you can get two for the price of one in Boston.
There wasn’t a huge difference in the days on market for the hot areas (43) and the entire Los Angeles market (45), but, on average, the hot properties sold in almost five days (Boston hot properties sold in about 4.5 days).
The bottom line is that hot properties are slightly bigger, newer and more expensive. There are distinct areas and house types where properties still sell fast, which continues to support our reason for doing this study in the first place — the real estate market isn’t really clinically depressed; it’s more of a split personality, with the good stuff selling fast, and the rest languishing.
Did you just buy a home in one of these neighborhoods? What was your experience?
Bonus link: The Wall Street Journal reports on the heartwarming side of the housing bust. [Warning: shameless Redfin plug] Read about a couple who escaped their 100-mile, LA-freeway commute.
Out of nowhere last week, an NPR producer sent us a note asking about Redfin’s March Madness plans. At first I thought she was talking about last week’s open houses release. Then I was about to say we aren’t doing anything special, but double-checked first with Redfin power forwards Klaus Gosma and Loren Ellingson, who are thick as thieves.
Klaus consulted with Jamie DeMichele, a developer on our data team who on one of his first days at Redfin explained to me with perfect solemnity that we could never play basketball together because “it would be too humiliating for you.” (”Well maybe you could come over to play cards instead,” I suggested. “That would be worse,” Jamie said.)
Jamie had secretly created a customized web application for running Redfin’s big bracket competition, complete with credit card authorization for the entry fee. He, Klaus and Loren had also talked to the IT department, which had commandeered one of our projectors to stream the games in our largest meeting area. Together they came forward to explain their comprehensive plan to make sure Redfin gets nothing done for the next two weeks.
I had no choice but to write the NPR producer back to explain that yes, perhaps, Redfin was doing something for the basketball tournament. Tune in to NPR this afternoon to hear the young DeMichele and his colleagues explain our plans:
Seattle: 94.9 at 6:30 p.m.; Bay Area: 88.5 at 4 p.m.; Southern California: 89.3 at 6:30 p.m.; Boston & DC: do we really have blog readers on the East Coast? Or just stream it.
HAL 9000: What is going to happen?
Dave Bowman: Something wonderful.
HAL 9000: I’m afraid.
Dave Bowman: Don’t be. We’ll be together.
HAL 9000: Where will we be?
Dave Bowman: Where I am now.
This is the conversation I always think of entrepreneurs at near-death startups having with their software…)
There used to be a tagline on Technorati that went, “55 million blogs, some of them have to be good.” We were somewhat comforted by that statement as we began to expand Sweet Digs, our local real estate blog, from Seattle to the Bay Area to Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. In only a year and a half, Sweet Digs had produced over 4,500 posts covering the West Coast. Some of them had to be good – and they were (so our readers tell us). Now we’re bringing Sweet Digs clear across the country to see if some of that New England win streak rubs off on us.
So we’ve hired a motley crew of real estate addicts to start covering Boston and Washington, D.C. neighborhoods. They are IT professionals, college professors, and broadcast journalists who moonlight as Redfin bloggers so they can write about whether prices have gotten out of hand or not.
One blogger is certain that when it comes to neighborhoods, up-and-coming is preferable to old-money-stagnant. I mean, who would want to live next to John Kerry or Jack Welch?
Another blogger beckons, no, dares you to abandon D.C.’s city life for the suburbs of Maryland.
It’s a good start and we promise it will get better. Get Sweet Digs delivered to your inbox by subscribing to the newsletter. If you have any feedback for us or tips on properties that you’d like our bloggers to cover send a message to tips(at)redfin(dot)com. We can even promote your open house on our blog, whether you’re a Redfin customer or not.
The segment was scheduled to run at 7:40, and the producer asked me to arrive by 6:50. Outside the Today studio it was festive: there was a gigantic Christmas tree, and traces of snow still on the ground, and a crowd of tourists, and a security guard manning a velvet rope. It was windy and cold. Inside there was another security guard, and — what a thrill! — another velvet rope.
The green room was just around the corner. The carpets were comfortable and worn. I was alone with two production assistants who were surfing the web on an ancient computer and watching the show; the food was plentiful: doughnut holes, egg sandwiches, cookies, bagels, granola bars, a plastic bowl of cut fruit. The place was crammed full of newspapers and televisions, all tuned to NBC. “Mind if we see what else is on?” I asked. They shook their heads.
A contingent of cooks showed up with a truck-sized slab of beef that they were going to prepare on the air. Since it was so early, I asked the PAs if they ate the food from the cooking segments and they said, “Oh yeah.”
The mood was unruffled. Brian Boitano was in the building, and somebody said, “It’s Brian Boitano.” Julia Roberts appeared just after Redfin, but her segment was taped the day before. Unlike “60 Minutes,” which was as highly charged and carefully wrought behind the scenes as it was on camera, “Today” is sunny, relaxed and fast-paced. It is after all on for four hours a day, almost every day. All the make-up people and production assistants are very encouraging, almost like amusement park attendants.
Heading up the stairs to the make-up room, I walked through a door and literally ran into Matt Lauer. “Hi guys!” he said. “Do I really need make-up?” I asked and the make-up people nodded with religious conviction. I asked them about their favorite stars to work on and they told me “the stars bring their own make-up people.”
The producer called to say I would do great. I think I sounded nervous, which made him sound very nervous. We ended up reassuring one another. I wanted to ask if I could use the word “kick-ass” on the air, for reasons I can no longer remember, but then told him “forget it,” and he said “what?” and I said, “no, forget it,” and then he said “Just don’t get nervous.”
At that very moment I was thinking of a Post headline I saw on my last visit here, when the Mets choked in a pennant-race (”PAGING DR. HEIMLICH”), and the one from the day before, when Mike Huckabee had to apologize to Mitt Romney (”I HUCKED UP.”) A PA escorted me onto the set five minutes before the segment started. I shook hands briefly with Meredith Viera, and with 90 seconds to go, I was wired for sound.
While I sat in the bar-stool, Meredith Vieira’s executive producer kept making jokes in her earpiece that caused her to say “You’re terrible.” And “stop.” She turned to me and said “He’s just being mean,” though of course I had no idea what the executive producer was saying. She sized me up and then said, “Can I preview the out?”– the segue to the next segment which the anchors memorize in case at any moment they have to end the current segment.
I tried to remember the advice I got the day before from a friend of a friend, waiting on the outdoor platform for a train in an ice-storm, clutching a cell phone with a frozen, agonized claw (”How much time do you have?” he asked. “12 hours.” “Oh my God. And what’s all that noise in the background?” “It’s me, freezing to death.” “Ok, the first thing to remember is to sound happy — you don’t sound too happy right now, ha ha!”). Here was the advice we got from him, and an Omaha pediatrician with TV experience, both of whom were enormously helpful:
Enthusiasm, passion, conviction: The most important qualities
Always answer three questions: So what? Who cares? What’s in it for me (that is, the viewer)?
Assume the viewer is channel surfing and didn’t hear the question.
Look at the interviewer; let the camera-people worry about the angle in which to shoot your face.
It isn’t uncommon for the questions to change the night before the show.
Don’t lean back in the chair; scoot forward, as this naturally tends to improve your posture.
Tuck arms close to sides, as this also tends to improve posture, but don’t have your arms too close to your sides.
Talk with your hands if that’s how you’re comfortable.
Avoid correcting the anchor; validate the questions.
If you want to circle back to an answer, you can say, “Like we were talking about earlier…”
The interviewer usually chooses you because he or she is most interested in your area; assume she is interested in what you have to say.
It’s probably best to avoid wearing white or patterns of a finer weave than a centimeter. Wearing a blazer gives depth (”I left my blazer at home.” “OK then, wearing a blazer makes you look stuck up. Ha ha!”)
On the set, Vieira was very relaxed and amazingly good at scrolling ahead through the teleprompter script just before the segment started and then never really looking at it again. She was also friendly, which calmed me down. Then she kicked off the segment by saying that I was here to explain how everything a Realtor tells you may be wrong. I knew that somewhere at that very moment, a blood-thirsty mob of real estate agents was forming.
The rest of the interview, I was worried about what they would think. But then before I knew it we were done. The producer showed up and said we did great, not entirely convincingly. Swinging by the control room — eerily dark but for the light of forty television monitors — I saw on one monitor that Vieira was already doing aerobics with her next guest.
I met a children’s book author from Palm Beach when I went to pick up my laptop from the green room, and someone in the crowd outside cheered when I came outside. I checked my phone and saw nine text messages from Redfin’s well-wishers. And I felt very grateful to Today’s producers, and lucky to have such a wonderful team, and to work at such a great company.
My mom called to say I was “very informative. But why can’t you sit up straight?”
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