Want to get on the Today show? First, get yourself a death grip on the obvious, then pimp it in a snazzy press release

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t want to be mean to Redfin.com. It’s Christmas, for one thing. Plus which, Cynthia Pang, Redfin’s PR Queen, is even nicer than David Gibbons. And, all things considered, Redfin’s latest bold PR thrust is not all that awful. But still, it is funny…

The fact is, these Dilberts don’t actually work in real estate, or they never have until now. Not just Redfin.com, but all the venture-funded Realty.bot mechanics. I think there were people at Zillow who really did believe that real estate could be sold without intermediaries. And Redfin beams with an infant’s delight every time it discovers something actual working professional Realtors have known for years — had to learn in order to survive as actual working professional Realtors.

But, take just a moment to consider this idiocy, which was on BusinessWeek’s Hot Property weblog earlier today. What is it? Fake news generated by a Realty.bot and spoon fed to a mainstream media outlet. The “story” itself is stoopid, but the transaction is atrocious, exactly the kind of media whoring that all of us should rebel against — exactly what the mainstream media has always been and what the world of weblogging should never be.

In this light, Redfin’s press release is not so bad. The advice it proffers is actually good, even if it is comically obvious to anyone who has gotten good at getting paid for doing this job. It is going to form the core of Redfin’s agent-training program, and that really is funny — though maybe not so much if you’ve sold a home with a Redfin agent who didn’t know this stuff.

In any case, it is in that light that I am going to cover it, albeit briefly. It’s funny to me. It should be funny to anyone reading this here. But it’s not as bad — all things taken together — as it might be.

So here we go, with a death grip on the obvious: “Seven tactics for selling a home.”

1. Don’t overprice your property. You just can’t make this stuff up, kids.
2. Set your price to show up in web searches. That means pricing in menu pop-up tiers — in round increments of $25,000. If you’re learning this from Redfin, shame on you. Interestingly, their examples — “$250,000 rather than $251,000, or $325,000 rather than $326,000” — illustrate how club-footed is their thinking. Why would anyone price at $251,000 and not $249,000? Both are a mistake in the enwebbed world, but only one is a mistake with a plausible rationale.
3. Debut on Friday. Duh. The justification is a computer analysis, rather than a reflection of how Days on Market works in MLS systems.
4. Stay engaged with your agent. I kid you not: “According to several academic studies, motivated, active sellers are able to sell their property as much as 30 percent faster.” I’d ask, “Where would we be without academic studies,” but, presumably, I can’t venture a guess until someone does an academic study. Whodathunkit, though? Sellers who want their houses sold get better results than those who don’t! Amazing!
5. Market the property online. This is not the self-serving Redfin self-promotion you might have expected by now: “[P]romoting the listings on craigslist resulted in an average of 6.8 online visits to the property for each craigslist promotion.” This can’t be news to anyone reading here.
6. When selling your home, stay put. This is really the funniest of the bunch. Except for the very wealthy, no one markets a vacant house by choice. Either the sellers had to move out or a rental home has gone vacant. Even so, Redfin assures us that “vacant homes were 9.5 percent more likely to undergo a price reduction.” Ya think? Why?, you ask. The author of the academic reed Redfin is leaning on speculates that buyers thought the owners might be anxious to sell. Now that’s a profound insight into seller psychology…

   And finally…

7. Wait to list your property until neighboring foreclosures are off the market. I’m presuming you can ignore that advice if you yourself are in foreclosure.

Okayfine. It’s not bad advice, even though it’s stone obvious, and even though there’s a whole lot more that could have been covered instead. Redfin is the mainstream media’s golden child for now, to be replaced by another beaming infant when it goes down in flames. It doesn’t do to begrudge it its train of fawning media mandarins.

For one thing, the world is ours in the long run. And for another, if even one seller decides to price his home to the market and not to his fantasies, the world will be a better place. So, with that as a fervent hope: Thanks, Redfin. Ya done good.

 
Update: I should have known better. Taking a page from Google and reading it backwards, the Glenn Kelman policy, invariably, is, “Always do evil.” Today advises us that, “Everything your agent has been telling you is wrong.” Moreover, “Toss out everything you thought you knew about selling your home.” Three more bits of fun, even so: RE/Max got to pay to promote this swill. Meredith Viera stupidly told the whole world that her house is overpriced and she will come down in price. And Kelman’s face is surely going to freeze in that horrifying rictus he thinks is a big smile.

Here’s real justice: Someday, an actual reporter is going turn to Kelman and say, “Glenn, you’re the expert. How do you set up a lease-purchase so the buyer doesn’t get screwed? What’s the best way to do seller financing — a contract-for-deed or a carryback? Under what circumstances should a buyer consider waiving inspections?” Just keep on smiling, Glenn. You’re asking for it, and you’re going to get it.

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