“It’s okay if you don’t like dogs. Just don’t insist to the world that you do.”
Redfin is making offers on single-family homes and townhomes built after 1900 in parts of Middlesex, Norfolk and Plymouth counties. The company expects to expand to additional neighborhoods and property types in the region over time.
Going back to 1900 is ballsy. Everything built before 1935 or so was one-off – not production homes – and subsequent remodels would throw comparability out the window, anyway. But most of the houses on the I-495 outer loop – where RedfinNow is actually going – are post-WWII tract homes, many of them post-1980.
Where is RedfinNow not going? To Roxbury and Dorchester – or anywhere in Suffolk County – where the black people are. RedfinNow is redlining the very whitest part of a very racist, very redlined, very white state to stake its claim in Massachusetts.
Making these big-city boasts is absurd. No big-budget iBuyer works in inner-cities – which is why all of them are redlining, de facto. But redlining Redfin is so far from Boston and its bothersome diversity that it might as well claim Providence, too.
What a tangled web! Be like a real real estate brokerage, Redfin. Stop lying about racism and lie about your results, instead, like everybody else.
Yesterday on BloodhoundBlog:
Greg Swann: If Zillow is buying its marketing from Fiverr, it should spring for the upsell.
In other news:
Rob Hahn: Clear Cooperation Is a Disaster in the Making. Static market fallacy, along with normality bias. I read this theory two years ago and thought the same thing. When the market turns, the MLS will rise again.
The Hill: Is the US headed toward a new housing bubble?
The New York Post: Expelling Asian Americans from top schools proves NYC education is off the rails.
The Wall Street Journal: In L.A. and San Francisco, Schools Are Open but Classrooms Are Near-Empty.
Brian Brady says:
Rather than an taking a “brokerage exclusive listing”, couldn’t a large brokerage offer a $1 co-brokerage fee and achieve the same result?
May 4, 2021 — 8:56 am
Greg Swann says:
Thanks to Redfin, they can.
May 4, 2021 — 8:58 am
Greg Swann says:
I’ve lived in Lowell, Lawrence and North Andover along the 495, but I expect Redfin will be skipping those towns, too. North Andover is old and expensive – founded in 1645; do the math on the hardiest people you ever heard of – and Lowell and Lawrence have lots of black and brown people. The houses Redfin will buy will be suburban tract homes built during the 495 tech boom – look-at-me-I’m-white-and-nerdy two-story stick homes with shingle roofs.
They’re not wrong to buy predictable product. Even iBuyers have to make back some of their stupid “investments.” But they’re wrong to pretend they care anything about black homeowners when they are persistently 35 miles away from them.
If any of Redfin’s ugly race pandering smells good to you – your nose is lying to you, too.
May 4, 2021 — 2:14 pm