After chatting with with this guy and finding out they make $13/hour we stopped by 1707 Boylston Ave while waiting for my haircut.
So the story on this project is that they sold 10 units, rented 9 and are now auctioning 17. To get in on the auction you need to be pre-approved with their lender and bring a cashiers check for $1000 to the auction next weekend. If you win you need to pony up another $1500 that weekend. The bidding starts at $100,000 for the studios.
The place is what you’d expect; they took an old apartment building and put in granite countertops.
The place is really trying to appeal to dog owners with a massive doggie area in the basement:
There are also some old memories of the apartment like this sign over the coin op:
The “gym” in the basement is a little desolate:
In fact the whole basement reminded me of a college dorm.
The company doing this, Accelerated Marketing Partners, has done this before in California but the onsite real estate agents they have are local. For the projects that don’t or can’t go rental this is their other option.
Popularity: 15% [?]
23 responses so far ↓
1 Vanderleun // Oct 13, 2008 at 11:24 am
Man what a depressing pig of a building.
And the whole dog thing? What’s that about? An appeal to barren couples of all genders?
Just deeply sad and depressing. They couldn’t pay me to live here.
2 someone // Oct 13, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Some pictures of the outside of the building would be helpful.
3 Jason // Oct 13, 2008 at 2:49 pm
A friend of mine got kicked out of this building as a renter when they converted. Since then I’ve kept an eye on the building. She told me that the original plans for the basement rec room were a bit larger. I got the idea they ran out of money a little early. Now there’s no wall separating the “gym” (two cardio machines and a mat) and the “rec room” (a sectional sofa, a coffee table, and a TV that’s just a little too close). Imagine watching a ballgame while trying to ignore the noise of the elliptical machine behind you. The dorm analogy is apt.
Going into the sales center I thought about buying my friend’s apartment for a cheap price and renting it back to her for the same rent (at a small profit, no less) but after seeing the sorry state of that conversion, I’ll pass. Good luck to the buyers.
4 jcricket // Oct 13, 2008 at 3:27 pm
You there Matt? Did you survive round 1 of the layoffs?
5 Bob // Oct 13, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Doggie area in the basement…hahaha
6 Dan C. // Oct 13, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Agreed…just saw the story on PSBJ…hope you made it through okay. Tough times!
7 Matt // Oct 13, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Thanks for asking :).
I’m still with Redfin and despite the macro economic conditions very optimistic about the company and what we’re doing.
8 Matt // Oct 13, 2008 at 4:03 pm
@someone: Sorry, I completely forgot to take photos of the exterior. Don’t worry, it’s nothing special.
9 jcricket // Oct 13, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Phew! Glenn’s note on the blog was at least gracious (I hate when they refer to laid off people as “chaff” or overhead or whatever - so was nice to be humble and not blame those that worked hard for failing to meet revenue or whatever).
BTW, not that you care, but I don’t share your optimism. I’m not a doom-and-gloomer, but the first round of layoffs is rarely the last, the recession itself (as opposed to the credit crisis) has barely begun, and redfin is far from cash-rich.
Having lived through the 91 recession and the dot-com bust - I can say that we’re not anywhere near the bottom yet.
10 vanderleun // Oct 13, 2008 at 4:57 pm
That’s true.
The only bottom we’ve come near so far is the taxpayer’s and we’re not even at the bottom of that bottom yet.
But we are getting there.
11 someone // Oct 13, 2008 at 5:27 pm
It might not be “anything special” but for those who live on the hill, exterior photos can help you remember just which building it is/used to be. They keep changing names etc.
Take that LOVELY condo conversion of the crappy ex-motel type building near the corner of Bellevue,Bellevue & Bellevue for example- I wouldn’t remember the name of it to save my life- but just one picture would do the trick ;)
12 Matt // Oct 13, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Agreed that we’re not at bottom yet.
My “optimism” is centered around the fact that with an up or down economy people, for a number of reasons, will always be buying and selling homes, and I think Redfin can be a much better way to buy or sell.
13 jcricket // Oct 13, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Yes, there will always be some kind of home market. And Redfin is cheaper than other options. But this is the same kind of rose-colored-glasses article (even 1% of our market is huge!) that came from the lips of every failed dot-com in 99 and 2000.
You guys have high overhead (salary v. commission), small cash position, need to spend to gain market-share, and are “unproven” when compared to “known” options. As times get tougher for traditional RE agents I expect their prices to come down, further eroding your cost advantage.
Coupled with a significant decline in sales volume (which already hammered you once), I don’t see a “new” (relatively) company making it through this unprecedented downturn.
The slideshow floating around the Internet from Sequoia Capital makes it pretty clear that lots of startups (industry doesn’t matter) with the same fundamentals as you will be going under.
Again, just to be honest, I see Redfin as one of them, probably with more significant cuts (another 20-30%) by year end, before maybe selling technology to some bigger RE company.
And as a side note, I’ve worked at a place that used Plumtree software. It’s no wonder they went under.
14 EconE // Oct 13, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Redfin could easily become the “condo clearing house” center.
Just start in Miami and work your way around the country/world in the same manner that the bubble did.
How many people do you really think are going to close on those bazillion units that are due in FL, AZ, NV, MO, CA, OR, WA and all the vacation condos too (ski resort towns, condos in Mexico/Panama/Costa Rica/Canada etc etc).
Most of the highrises around the country are so homogeneous that you really don’t need a full service agent to show you the units. A few dozen pics and quality information online and you’re good to go.
There are so many empty condos worldwide that they might as well start selling them out of vending machines.
15 jo // Oct 13, 2008 at 9:26 pm
JCricket, EconE - give it a rest.
Twenty people woke up this morning to some of the worst news you can receive. Drop the act for now at least.
Have some compassion and sympathy for these folk.
16 Matt // Oct 13, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I’m very familiar with the Sequoia deck; I agree, these are uncertain times. But if I wanted certainty I would have stayed at Microsoft.
What I am certain of is that we’re adapting to the changes in our industry and economy. Our overhead costs are coming down significantly (staff reduction and other changes), we don’t need to raise money (our cash position is not that small), while we are price competitive now we are evolving the service to compete not on price but on customer satisfaction (look for a new product offering in November) and we’re diversified across a number of markets (all at different stages of the crash/recovery.)
I think we are significantly different from the many web 2.0 companies who don’t have customers, have never asked their users for money, or have been dependent on Google Adsense for revenue.
The last downturn flushed a lot of bad companies and business plans but some great companies and services did survive (PayPal, Amazon, Buy.com, BlueNile.) Maybe we’ll emerge from this, maybe we won’t. I’ll be damned if we’re not going to try :).
As for Plumtree, I’ve never used it. But if you have suggestions on how we can improve Redfin let me know (matt.goyer@redfin.com) as my team is responsible for the user experience of finding real estate using it and my colleague Adam is responsible for the experience of those who do buy. If there’s something you don’t like it was likely my mistake.
17 Vanderleun // Oct 13, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Dear Jo,
We don’t need some school marm wandering in and passing out the correctives.
When we want to be told what is the correct way to feel, we’ll ask you.
Thank you for sharing.
Gerard
18 uptown // Oct 14, 2008 at 1:00 pm
The difference this time around is that a whole lot of companies are sitting on a whole lot of cash.
19 EconE // Oct 14, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Jo…
I wasn’t referring to the people that were laid off. That does suck. I was just stating my belief that Redfin isn’t going anywhere. Hopefully as Redfin grows again, those that were laid off will be first in line for the new positions. I’m glad that our blog author is still employed.
Uptown…
Perhaps you are correct…however…I’d be willing to bet that many companies are also sitting on a whole lot of debt too. The bigger issue is the consumer. Broke consumers are no good to companies sitting on piles of cash.
20 Matt // Oct 14, 2008 at 10:33 pm
If I was unemployed just think how much time I’d have to blog about sucky Seattle condo projects! This blog would rock.
(Okay, back to working on shipping the next version of Redfin.)
21 jcricket // Oct 15, 2008 at 9:03 am
I am in the same boat as EconE. Having been laid off, I am totally sympathetic to others who have been. And nowhere in my post did I say the laid off employees “deserved it” or did anything wrong. Frankly, kudos to the Redfin CEO for being so magnanimous in his blog post - it’s one of the most heartfelt I’ve ever read.
That said, anyone who thought things were hunky-dory enough to raise revenue forecasts as recently as a month ago is not someone I’d want to be following as the captain of my “ship”.
And while Redfin is better off than companies dependent on ad sales, the number of employees is an order of magnitude higher than a lot of those startups as well, and the “effort per sale” effort is pretty high too - making it probably a wash.
I’d give Redfin no better than 10% odds of making it out of the coming downturn an independent company. Note this is only down from the traditional 20% odds of any startup making it, so I’m not _that_ pessimistic :-)
22 jcricket // Oct 15, 2008 at 9:05 am
BTW Matt - you should pre-emptively register some domains for the coming RE-pacolypse: “f-edcondos.com”, “repartment.com” or whatever :-)
23 Matt // Oct 15, 2008 at 10:17 am
Re: Revenue forecasts. We’re going to be mixing things up soon and were optimistic about the headway we’ve been making in markets like Palo Alto and parts of Southern California. Of course now that GOOG has come crashing down the Palo Alto market is going to deteriorate.
Re: ad sales.
Looking at companies like Zillow and Trulia they are carrying the same or higher headcount but wholly dependent on advertising.
Re: domain name registration.
That’s a great idea!
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