Glenn Kelman has been at the helm of real estate tech company and brokerage firm Redfin for 20 years.
He announced Tuesday that he is leaving the company to pursue activities outside of real estate. His departure comes about six months after Rocket acquired Redfin in one of the industry’s most notable recent mergers.
Kellman has been a public figure for many years, and his enthusiasm for the company he helped found and his all-round energy have made him enemies and won hearts at other times.
In saying goodbye to the industry he helped shape, Inman reflected on some of Kellman’s most memorable moments. It’s not hard to see why Kelman is not quickly forgotten.
60 minute appearance
Screenshot of Glenn Kelman on “60 Minutes” in 2007
In 2007, about two years after starting his career at Redfin, Kellman appeared on an episode of 60 Minutes as a young CEO ready to shake up the old guard real estate industry.
As part of the episode, 60 Minutes staff filmed Kellman and then-Realtor.com executive Alan Dalton having a heated argument over commission rates at Inman Connect New York. The atmosphere was tense, and Brad Inman later described the discussion as “like the sound of a garbage disposal with some cherry seeds rattling around at the bottom.”
This moment helped Kellman gain a reputation as a mob rouser willing to criticize traditional corporations and the status quo.
About establishing one’s position and taking one’s place.
Glenn Kelman at Inman Connect San Francisco in 2005 (Photo by Erik Hersman)
Over the years, Kellman has evolved into an outgoing and respectful debater, noting that his tone has become softer, even though his beliefs remain as strong as ever.
In 2018, for example, Kellman told then-Inman reporter Patrick Kearns that he regretted being too “belligerent” early in his career. His attitude began to change years ago when he had lunch with Windermere East office leaders Matt and Joe Deasy, who showed him how much they cared about consumers, too.
“And every time I talked about traditional real estate agents and competing brokerages, I felt like I could imagine two smart, principled people, rather than faceless competitors,” Kelman said. “That’s when I started to feel like I could establish myself in this industry. I think for a long time I was just a little whiny, a little cocky, a little bit out of line.”
In the same conversation, Kelman added that he is conflicted between taking public positions on general political issues and sticking to topics closely related to real estate. But in any case, this struggle captured Kellman’s early willingness to hide the cause he saw as righteous in his name.
“People moving in, it’s a real estate issue. Housing and affordability is a real estate issue. Providing the same level of service to white people and black people who are looking to buy a home is a real estate issue. And I think there’s a place for us to stand up on all of these issues…”
become a reality TV star
“Buy My House” (L-R) Biggie Danisha Leister, Glenn Kelman, Pamela Liebman, Brandon Copeland. (Credit: Provided by NETFLIX / © 2022 Netflix, Inc.)
In the fall of 2022, Kelman became the star of Netflix’s “Buy My House.”
The first season, modeled after Shark Tank, also featured Corcoran Group’s Pamela Liebman, NFL linebacker Brandon Copeland and broker Danisha Reigster. The show’s basic premise was that American homeowners could sell their homes to the real estate industry’s “biggest” stars in hopes of striking a lucrative deal.
During the season, Kellman told Inman that he developed a friendship with Liebman, whom he had not previously known well.
“My partnership with her was really fun because I was hemming, unraveling, and looking at numbers a lot,” Kellman recalls. “But she was playing around in the room and observing the seller’s emotions.”
Kelman added, “Pam and I were very comfortable with this idea of sometimes being competitive and sometimes collaborating. Sometimes, if she had a vision for the development, we would split the contract.”
Honest voice from the industry
Glenn Kelman of Redfin. (Photo credit: AJ Canaria of MoxiWorks)
Kelman’s penchant for speaking out on major issues has become one of his hallmarks over the years, setting him apart from other quiet business leaders.
In 2021, Kellman and Redfin joined with Realtor.com to call on other real estate websites to help remove criminal data from their listings. They cited concerns about fair housing as well as differences in how people assess safety and crime in certain neighborhoods.
As racial tensions rose across the country in the late 2010s, Mr. Kelman pledged to hire more agents of color to address systemic inequities in homebuying.
And these days, Mr. Kellman champions the National Association of Realtors’ clear cooperation policy. He argued that it was in consumers’ best interest to list as many residential listings as possible, and framed the rule as a way to avoid a spiral of real estate monopoly.
“No matter how the rules for pocket listings change, Redfin will abide by them and use the same competitive weapons that our competitors use against us,” Kelman wrote in an Inman op-ed before NAR released the delayed marketing exemption listing option. “Redfin, like the vast majority of brokerages in the United States, very much wants the rules to treat listings as a sacred trust and market real estate to the benefit of buyers and sellers, and in some ways that’s fair to brokerages large and small.”
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