Bed Bath & Beyond's acquisition of Fathom Realty reveals a dangerous mistake: treating homes as commodities. Houses carry emotional and familial weight that can't be sold online like products. The speaker warns that Amazon or other giants may try the same approach and fail for missing the human element entirely.
Let's start with the first headline from yesterday that was hilarious for a lot of us, that Bed Bath Beyond is buying Fathom Realty. Now, didn't expect this one, and I got really tickled by James Dwygan saying this wasn't on his bingo card. I don't think this was on anybody's bingo card, especially knowing that Bed Bath Beyond had closed down most of their brick and mortar. But then again, you can understand why they would want a real estate company, and they obviously, no offense Fathom, They picked one that was going to be pretty inexpensive. So on the multiple, you're not talking a purchase like, they didn't get Keller Williams or something like that. So why does Bed Bath Beyond want a real estate firm? Well, Bed Bath Beyond thinks that real estate is a commodity. Would you please understand this? Real estate is not a commodity, has never been, and can't really ever be because houses are not just things, they are places, they are, Memories, they are where families are created and families fall apart, and it's where people live and do life. And you all know this, if you're in residential real estate, when you're in the door with a buyer and it's the right house, they start sparkling because they can feel it. And yes, it sounds a little bit ooey and, what's the word that the young people use? Anyway, it sounds all new agey and all of that, but it's always been this way. People feel houses, and you can also feel when you've been in a house, I've been in a house that had had trafficking in it. And we knew it because the neighbors came over and told us and the police had just craziness. And when we walked in that house, we could feel so much negative. And it's a house, right? And so when you walk in the door, and you can feel that this is what I need real estate professionals to understand. There's still a buyer for it. But a Bed Bath Beyond that's going to want to sell your house in their online marketplace, or have their online partner sell you the house in the online marketplace for some kind of a discount or connection or whatever. They can never grasp the emotional thing that goes on with houses. So I would imagine this will happen again. And by the way, y'all, this is probably your setup for seeing Amazon get into real estate and probably they'll go with somebody big like Keller Williams because they're probably the only one big enough to buy Gary out. So there's that headline, kind of a crazy one, but here we are.
