16 Minutes & Redpin

2007-05-28T19:51:00Z

Hello everyone, Les Stool here! As you probably have already seen, we had some fun last Thursday and put together a little spoof on YouTube called 16 Minutes. As you can imagine there is a lot of talk about this video and the original CBS production. As the Point2 NLS community we have an opportunity to work together to set matters straight when others mislead the public about the value proposition that skilled real estate professionals bring to consumers.

We decided to take a shot at the CBS 60 Minutes report on May 13^th called “6 Percent” because of what we felt was poor reporting. We’re not saying that the Real Estate Profession doesn’t need an overhaul, nor are we defending 6% commissions, but we felt this news report was very misleading. If you haven’t already seen it, please watch or read the original CBS 60 Minute version, at least for the first 5 minutes or so.

Let’s start with Lehrer Willis and his fiancée Bridgette Takeuchi who stated that they saved $26,000 by using Redfin instead of a traditional real estate agent. Well they can only say that if they follow it up with: “that is assuming a traditional professional real estate agent would not have sold our home for more”. We at Point2 strongly believe that a true professional real estate agent most likely would have sold their home for more, after all that’s what they do for a living. We know Redfin will argue that they are license real estate agents, but the fact of the matter is they leave most everything up to the seller other than the paper work, the seller is even required to do their own open houses. We get a chuckle out of people like Morgan Brown from Blown Mortgage who defends discounters like Redfin who get their sellers to do their own open houses, but cuts down our spoof video saying that we should leave comedy to those who make it their profession. Well Morgan, don’t you think the same should be applied to selling homes, should that not be left to professionals as well?

Next there is Willis and Takeuchi’s agent, Kelly Engel, who used to be a traditional agent but went to Redfin because she was making too much money. In her own words: “...I would make $12,000 for four hours of work. And I thought this cannot keep going on like this. Someone, I felt like I was going to get caught! You know, someone’s going to see that this is happening....” Come on, of course once and while you catch a break and get an easy one. But really, for CBS to actually think that people are going to buy that, they should be making movies not news.

Then there is Glenn Kelman, president and CEO of Redfin who says: “Real estate, by far, is the most screwed up industry in America....” THE MOST SCREWED UP INDUSTRY IN AMERICA? Hmmm, you have to think he thought that one out before he said it, don’t you? By his own admission the value of real estate in the United States has quadrupled in the last 25 years. That means that the most valuable asset that most people own has increased in value by over 400% in that period. Sounds like a pretty healthy industry to us. You know at least he could have prefaced it with “next to public company accounting...”, then some of us might have given him credit for at the very least given that statement a couple seconds of forethought.

Then Glenn stated: “...and we feel like things that Amazon or eBay or Yahoo have done of other industries, we can do for the real estate industry.” Well Glenn, those companies raised many hundreds of millions of dollars in the late 90’s, and out of the three of them both Yahoo and eBay have for many years now tried to get a piece of the real estate pie, but for the most part to no avail. To try to compare Redfin to those companies and then say that “we can do for the real estate industry” what both Yahoo and eBay have failed to do, is not only very ambitious, but we feel it’s misleading.

Real estate is a complex capital asset, which has a complex sales process and a complex transfer of ownership. That being said, we believe that there will always be the need for the real estate professional. At the same time we will admit that going forward the consumer is going to demand and get, a lot more from their real estate professional.

Now here are some of the places you will find discussions about our spoof video. Please feel free to jump into any of them and put some good words in for your profession.

InmanBlog

Point2 jumps into the 60 minutes fray with Redpin and Leslie Stool

Tired of Redfin and 60 Minutes

Blown Mortgage

Redfin Hate Speech at a 2nd Grade Level

Leaving no stone unturned!

16 Minutes & Redpin