A deal with the devil in selling to Redfin?

It started with a little journalistic curiosity. And more than a bit of germaphobia.

I was selling my place in Los Angeles in preparation for a move to the Bay Area. My partner and I weren’t vaccinated against COVID yet, and the last thing we wanted was a parade of prospective buyers breathing all over our pillows and pawing our countertops. As I scoured the internet for information about COVID safety and home sales, I found myself bombarded with ads imploring me to “Sell your home to Redfin.”

I had read about “iBuyers” before — mostly tech firms that paid cash for houses and used algorithms to inform their offers. My understanding was that the business had all but dried up in the face of the pandemic. It appeared I was wrong.

The ads were intriguing. I filled out a form on Redfin’s site that asked me for some basic details about my place. The very next day I got a call with an offer.

It was good. Very good. Significantly higher than a neighbor who sold her place months before. And Redfin was going to take a 3% commission instead of the 5% I would have to pay to a normal agent. Redfin would send an agent and two inspectors by to make sure nothing was seriously wrong with the place (“We aren’t emotional, like a typical buyer,” a person on the phone assured me). And that was it.

No need to keep things spotless for weeks at a time (or ever, if I’m being honest); we could keep our moving boxes where we pleased. And wouldn’t have to worry about catching COVID. Redfin would give us a 90day window to complete the sale, plenty of time to get vaccinated and find a new place.

So we signed the papers. I kept waiting for the rug to be pulled out. For some kind of scam to reveal itself. But it never did.

There were hitches, of course.

It’s true that Redfin wasn’t emotional, but it drove a hard bargain on certain repairs. I hired a real estate lawyer to talk me through the process and to help with the paperwork. But that cost a fraction of what an agent takes in commission. We recently closed the deal, and I can’t say I’m anything but happy with the transaction.

Now that the dust has settled, however, I am wondering about the broader impacts of selling to Big Tech. What are they going to do with my place? And what does this all portend for California’s housing market, which is already an overpriced and unaffordable mess?

I had always assumed that Redfin’s plan was to undercut agents out of commissions. Even if Redfin buys and then sells a house for exactly the same price, it’s still raking in a commission on both ends. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of transactions, and you’re talking billions.

California’s real estate industry isn’t exactly a model of enlightened capitalism. From writing racial segregation into California’s Constitution to preserving the worst of Proposition 13, it has routinely been on the wrong side of some of the most loathsome policies this state has ever devised. No one should shed any tears if tech wants to squeeze them and pass on the savings.

But Stanford finance Professor Amit Seru, who has studied the impacts of iBuyers across the country, said it’s too soon to tell what the iBuyer long game is: “I do think the current play is to bring costs down. But any longterm intention is difficult to parse.”

IBuying could be a data mine. It could be about cornering the listings market. It could be about hoarding supply to drive prices up. Or it may turn out to be all of the above.

“It’s possible one of these companies could become the Amazon of real estate,” Seru said.

Think about it: Using reams of intimate personal and financial data it gathered during my home sale, a company like Redfin could one day sell me a fully furnished home, catered to my personal style, while offering me a loan to cover the whole package. It gets a piece of all of it.

In theory, this could remove inefficiencies in the market and help make buying a home easier and more affordable.

“If you’re buying a new condo in downtown San Francisco,” Seru said, “everyone has a pretty good idea what that’s worth. You shouldn’t have to pay a hefty commission.”

Of course becoming a monstrous monopoly is also a possibility.

Whatever the end game is, agents don’t seem to be too nervous. “We’re confident that navigating the complexities of real estate transactions in California is an evergreen service,” said California Association of Realtors chief economist Jordan Levine. “It’s the Wild West right now a little bit. Each iBuyer seems to have a different objective — other than to maximize profit.”

Two weeks after it bought my old house, Redfin listed it for about what they paid. We’ll see what happens next.

Have a little faith, Californians. Even if you can’t stand the religion or politics of your local churches, you might find their congregations to be valuable saviors — of your historic and endangered movie theaters.

In other words, please think twice before starting a holy war like the one in Fresno over the historic Tower Theater. The Tower, first opened in 1939, is an arrowshaped, Streamline Moderne gem anchoring a neighborhood of retail, restaurants and arts known as the Tower District. But, like so many of California’s onescreen theaters, it can’t support itself as a movie house in the era of Netflix. So, the theater’s owner is trying to sell. The only viable buyer, so far, is an evangelical church that has opposed samesex marriage and LGBTQ ministers.

As a practical matter, church takeovers of old theaters make sense. Movies and live shows are not enough to support the expensive upkeep of these dilapidated palaces. Churches with growing congregations can regularly fill the seats while raising money for maintenance and improvements — and keeping the space available to the community for events and screenings. But these are polarized, not practical times. And many growing churches are nontraditional, evangelical, or politically conservative, and thus don’t fit the more secular and progressive entertainment districts where you find old theaters. In wise communities, churches and their neighbors look past their differences and focus on their shared interest in the old buildings.

Responsible churches agree to preserve and maintain theaters they take over, in exchange for neighborhoods accommodating the traffic or parking headaches of hosting a congregation. That’s essentially what happened with two other theaters in Fresno, Hardy’s and the Wilson, when churches moved in. But at the Tower Theater, the church and the community have escalated conflict and eschewed collaboration, turning a neighborhood problem into statewide controversy. To summarize: During the pandemic, the Tower Theater owner allowed Adventure Church, a largely Latino congregation located elsewhere in the Tower District, to hold services there. Adventure liked it so much that, when Tower’s owner put the property up for sale late last year, the church agreed to purchase it — and keep it open for shows and nonprofit events. But when word of the purchase agreement leaked, many people in the Tower District saw the transfer of the iconic theater to the church as an attack on the artsy, inclusive neighborhood. A petition opposing the sale circulated widely, and weekly Sunday protests were held. Local businesses also objected to having a church near so many bars and cannabis businesses.

The antichurch protests soon drew counterprotestors from rightwing groups, and police erected barriers to keep them separate. Either the church or the theater owner — it’s not clear whom — raised the political temperature by displaying a tribute to the late rightwing talk show host Rush Limbaugh, infamous for his homophobic rhetoric, on the theater marquee. California media, obsessed with political disputes and culture wars, fueled the controversy with their coverage. The conflict grew from there. The Tower property includes restaurants; one of them sued to block the sale, saying its own agreement entitled it to purchase the property. Fresno’s mayor, seeking to defuse the situation, offered the church an alternative property, which Adventure turned down. Other city officials floated the idea of taking the theater by eminent domain.

If the neighborhood can find a savior for the theater less morally problematic than Adventure, that would be wonderful. But there are reasons to doubt whether a relatively poor city government like Fresno’s, or a restaurant, can successfully operate an old and costly theater. If that’s the case, then Adventure might well be the best option, and it would be smart for the community and the church to stop fighting and start talking.

Yes, I can hear the howls at the idea of compromising with an antigay church. But a keepyourenemiesclose approach makes more sense. And if you want the church to stop spreading hate, what better way than to engage with it, with the goal of changing the hearts and minds of the congregation?

I’ve witnessed this more conciliatory approach bear fruit in two California places. One is Redding, where the huge Bethel Church, and its School of Supernatural Ministry, have long been controversial. Bethel has supported gay conversion therapy, and attempts to perform miracles (like using prayer in an attempt to resurrect a dead toddler). But when Redding’s civic auditorium was in trouble, the church and its members helped form a nonprofit, Advance Redding, to save it and manage it. The deal has been a civic success, with the auditorium hosting a variety of shows and the ministry school making rent payments to support the facility.

The other theater is literally around the corner from my San Gabriel Valley home. The historic Rialto, which famously played itself in movies (as the murder scene in Robert Altman’s “The Player,” and as the date spot where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone watch old movies in “La La Land”) sat vacant and decaying for nearly a decade until Mosaic Church, a growing megachurch with congregations from Hollywood to Mexico City , moved in. There was some community resistance to the church’s arrival, and concern for what the theater might become. Mosaic is not my cup of tea — I attended services, and while I liked the diverse and young congregation, your cynical columnist cringed at the popstyle music and the overthetop positivity of the message.

But, three years later, Mosaic is undeniably a neighborhood asset. The church has carefully repaired the theater, and taken care to keep the place open and welcoming to the community. Before the pandemic, Mosaic was routinely screening movies on the Rialto’s giant screen. One of the last films we saw before COVID19 hit was a Mosaicsponsored showing of “Miracle on 34th Street,” the classic Christmas film about having faith in people whose beliefs we do not share.