Anika Begay
He meant it: When asked about the company’s “Plan B” if mortgage rates don’t go down, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman responded, “Plan B is to drink our own urine or our competitors’ blood and stay in the trenches.”
This wasn’t an informal, off-the-record meeting. It was during Redfin’s second-quarter earnings call, the kind of call where executives typically stick to cheesy, optimistic platitudes, a call that gets transcribed on investor relations websites.
The real estate website’s earnings were better than expected, but Wall Street analysts were focused on the outlook for the broader housing market. At one point, Kelman compared the current market to “The Twilight Zone,” saying, “I can’t remember a time when [mortgage] rates have come down so far, so fast, and the market has been so silent in its response. And we just have to believe that it will [go up].”
To be clear, he hopes the market improves, but he is not counting on it.
After the aforementioned promise to drink various bodily fluids, Kelman added: “The last earnings call ended with me singing a line from a Who song, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’ where I said we’re not counting on low rates when other people thought they might go down. […] We are ready to acquire market share if the market grows, we are ready to acquire market share even if it does not grow, but we will not give up”.
Then finally, just before the call ended, Kelman expressed a little regret over his choice of words: “We’ll drink our urine before we drink our blood. Actually, I just wish I hadn’t said that. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
