Realtor.com
We grieve the killing of George Floyd, alongside the Black
community, and the world, as we continue to grieve an already too
long list of racial injustice victims. These losses are
devastatingly painful. We are at a pivotal moment where it is
critical that we better understand and appreciate one another,
recognize that in our diversity lies strength, and commit to be
allies for one another.
We understand that navigating the pain, anger, anxiety and fear that the events of recent days have brought forward is tremendously challenging. We also understand that we don’t have all the answers, and frankly, many of us can’t know what it’s like to be faced with systemic racism every day of our lives. But we are committed to moving forward together, providing our employees the resources they need, and being a force for change.
At realtor.com, we stand with the Black community, and for the right of every person to be who they are, to be seen, accepted, and supported, in all their uniqueness and significance. We celebrate the many amazing histories and experiences and perspectives we all bring to our work, to our families and our communities. And we all have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to take action to foster empathy, humanity, and philanthropy, both inside and outside our walls.
We understand that navigating the pain, anger, anxiety and fear that the events of recent days have brought forward is tremendously challenging. We also understand that we don’t have all the answers, and frankly, many of us can’t know what it’s like to be faced with systemic racism every day of our lives. But we are committed to moving forward together, providing our employees the resources they need, and being a force for change.
At realtor.com, we stand with the Black community, and for the right of every person to be who they are, to be seen, accepted, and supported, in all their uniqueness and significance. We celebrate the many amazing histories and experiences and perspectives we all bring to our work, to our families and our communities. And we all have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to take action to foster empathy, humanity, and philanthropy, both inside and outside our walls.
Zillow
Last week, Zillow released a simple message: “Racism has no home
here.” This message expresses our commitment to creating a
workplace where everyone feels like they belong, and promoting
equity, justice and fairness in our company, our communities and
across our platform and operations.
We’ve been asked what we are doing to fight racism. The short answer is: not enough. Racism is pervasive. Too many stare it in the face daily. Racism is also present in real estate. We understand that our commitments and our accountability must be significantly stronger and deeper if we truly want and expect any change. We can and will do more.
As the protests against racism and police brutality in response to the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and more began erupting around the globe, I had multiple opportunities to sit down virtually with Zillow’s Black employees from our Billow (Black/African ancestry) affinity network to listen. I heard fear, anger, pain and exhaustion. Their candor deepened my understanding of the systemic racism that they — and every member of the Black community — have experienced all their lives. I realized that my anger and personal revulsion over this brutal stream of racist acts are negligible in relation to what Black people are feeling right now. Black Lives Matter, and their need is urgent.
At Zillow, we were founded on the value of “turning on the lights” — letting the truth of a situation shine through and giving power to the people. We believe it is our responsibility — as a corporation, a society and as humans — to bring change. As a company, we are focused on addressing inequities and promoting diversity in our own workplaces, and using the power of our platform to shine the light on racial and housing injustice, and taking steps to end it through our people, research and advocacy, products, business practices and social investments and partnerships.
Our company. As an employer, we want to ensure we foster an equitable culture in which everyone feels like they belong. We maintain mandatory training about managing bias, inclusive interviewing practices, and equity and belonging for all, and robust manager training around inclusion. And we support nine employee affinity networks including Billow; more than half of our employees belong to one or more.
We are also committed to improving the diversity of our workforce and leadership and providing great careers and advancement opportunities. Earlier this year, we implemented new recruiting methods to attract and create opportunities for a diverse group of candidates. Last year, we started publishing statistics about the diversity of our employees and leadership team. While we’ve made some progress, it’s clearly not enough. We can and will do more.
Our research, education and advocacy. We will continue to leverage the power of our data and economic research to illuminate the historical inequities and discrimination that plague the housing sector. There’s no justice in the fact that Black mortgage applicants are denied at twice the rate of white applicants, and the gap between the Black and white home ownership rates is wider now than it was in 1900.
We will continue to partner with groups like the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Urban League to help identify gaps and do more to advocate for change, solutions and justice. This includes calling on our government to take action and pass laws to fight racism and hate, as we did in Georgia this week.
Our products, technology and operations. As a company rooted in technology, we’re assembling some of Zillow’s top product, design and business people to determine more ways our products and operations can enable more justice, equality and fairness in our communities. To help house more of our low-income and homeless neighbors, we support and invest in Housing Connector, a Seattle-area nonprofit organization that launched last year to help eliminate the barriers that can keep individuals of color from accessing homes. The search tool we built for Housing Connector has helped 745 people find homes in the last 10 months, 70% of whom are people of color. While these are steps in the right direction, we must do more. We invite the whole real estate sector to step up and work together to create a more equitable market.
Nonprofit investment and partnership. Over the past five years, Zillow contributed $5 million to help support underserved communities in their pursuit of home. We have pledged at least $1 million over the next 12 months to support lasting partnerships to fight racism and discrimination and work toward fair and equal access to housing for all. We have donated to the NAACP in Minneapolis, where we have local operations and employees, and are deepening our partnership with the National Fair Housing Alliance to support a level playing field in the American dream of home. In the weeks and months ahead, we will further expand our nonprofit partnership base to fight racial injustice.
Personally, my wife, Sarah, and I will increase our own efforts to fight injustice. We have been longtime supporters of fighting racial inequities in our criminal justice system, including working toward decarceration of our prisons, where Black inmates outnumber white inmates 5:1. Thanks to Sarah, this has been the primary focus of our philanthropy for several years, as we support the fight to address bias based on race in our justice system.
At Zillow, we stand with our Black employees, the Black community and all underrepresented people against racism and inequity. The river of pain and anger flowing through our country right now demands our attention and more action. Racism has no home here — but words are not enough. We all must do more. We are committed to doing so.
#turnonthelights #includeandempower #bettertogether
We’ve been asked what we are doing to fight racism. The short answer is: not enough. Racism is pervasive. Too many stare it in the face daily. Racism is also present in real estate. We understand that our commitments and our accountability must be significantly stronger and deeper if we truly want and expect any change. We can and will do more.
As the protests against racism and police brutality in response to the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and more began erupting around the globe, I had multiple opportunities to sit down virtually with Zillow’s Black employees from our Billow (Black/African ancestry) affinity network to listen. I heard fear, anger, pain and exhaustion. Their candor deepened my understanding of the systemic racism that they — and every member of the Black community — have experienced all their lives. I realized that my anger and personal revulsion over this brutal stream of racist acts are negligible in relation to what Black people are feeling right now. Black Lives Matter, and their need is urgent.
At Zillow, we were founded on the value of “turning on the lights” — letting the truth of a situation shine through and giving power to the people. We believe it is our responsibility — as a corporation, a society and as humans — to bring change. As a company, we are focused on addressing inequities and promoting diversity in our own workplaces, and using the power of our platform to shine the light on racial and housing injustice, and taking steps to end it through our people, research and advocacy, products, business practices and social investments and partnerships.
Our company. As an employer, we want to ensure we foster an equitable culture in which everyone feels like they belong. We maintain mandatory training about managing bias, inclusive interviewing practices, and equity and belonging for all, and robust manager training around inclusion. And we support nine employee affinity networks including Billow; more than half of our employees belong to one or more.
We are also committed to improving the diversity of our workforce and leadership and providing great careers and advancement opportunities. Earlier this year, we implemented new recruiting methods to attract and create opportunities for a diverse group of candidates. Last year, we started publishing statistics about the diversity of our employees and leadership team. While we’ve made some progress, it’s clearly not enough. We can and will do more.
Our research, education and advocacy. We will continue to leverage the power of our data and economic research to illuminate the historical inequities and discrimination that plague the housing sector. There’s no justice in the fact that Black mortgage applicants are denied at twice the rate of white applicants, and the gap between the Black and white home ownership rates is wider now than it was in 1900.
We will continue to partner with groups like the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Urban League to help identify gaps and do more to advocate for change, solutions and justice. This includes calling on our government to take action and pass laws to fight racism and hate, as we did in Georgia this week.
Our products, technology and operations. As a company rooted in technology, we’re assembling some of Zillow’s top product, design and business people to determine more ways our products and operations can enable more justice, equality and fairness in our communities. To help house more of our low-income and homeless neighbors, we support and invest in Housing Connector, a Seattle-area nonprofit organization that launched last year to help eliminate the barriers that can keep individuals of color from accessing homes. The search tool we built for Housing Connector has helped 745 people find homes in the last 10 months, 70% of whom are people of color. While these are steps in the right direction, we must do more. We invite the whole real estate sector to step up and work together to create a more equitable market.
Nonprofit investment and partnership. Over the past five years, Zillow contributed $5 million to help support underserved communities in their pursuit of home. We have pledged at least $1 million over the next 12 months to support lasting partnerships to fight racism and discrimination and work toward fair and equal access to housing for all. We have donated to the NAACP in Minneapolis, where we have local operations and employees, and are deepening our partnership with the National Fair Housing Alliance to support a level playing field in the American dream of home. In the weeks and months ahead, we will further expand our nonprofit partnership base to fight racial injustice.
Personally, my wife, Sarah, and I will increase our own efforts to fight injustice. We have been longtime supporters of fighting racial inequities in our criminal justice system, including working toward decarceration of our prisons, where Black inmates outnumber white inmates 5:1. Thanks to Sarah, this has been the primary focus of our philanthropy for several years, as we support the fight to address bias based on race in our justice system.
At Zillow, we stand with our Black employees, the Black community and all underrepresented people against racism and inequity. The river of pain and anger flowing through our country right now demands our attention and more action. Racism has no home here — but words are not enough. We all must do more. We are committed to doing so.
#turnonthelights #includeandempower #bettertogether
Redfin
To Our Redfin Community:
On May 31, Redfin joined many other people and companies denouncing racism and racial violence. We believe Black Lives Matter and we support police reform, but we’re writing today about a more fundamental responsibility our company has to address racism: integration.
We can’t come together for a protest and then return to life in different worlds. We can heal our society’s great wound only if Black people and white people live side by side, with the same schools, grocery stores and job opportunities. This requires every real estate agent to approach our jobs differently.
Exclusivity isn’t an occasional problem in the real estate industry; it has been a founding premise. Homebuyers seeking a coveted neighborhood don’t pay $10,000 in fees for agents to complete a contract or show a home. An agent earns those fees by finding a way for her customers to get the loan others couldn’t, the listings others overlooked, the deal done with an agent she has known for years. The result can change a family’s trajectory across generations.
At Redfin, we’re creating a world where no one has to know the secret handshake to get the loan, the listing or the deal. In the meantime, our job as agents is to pursue these advantages for each of our customers with zeal. That obligates us to pursue each customer with zeal, whether that customer is Black or white, new to home-buying or an old hand.
Equal service should be the norm in our industry, but it isn’t. Industry-wide studies in 2018 and 2019 show that white people get much better real estate service than Black people with the same finances. That difference perpetuates segregated neighborhoods.
This is why Redfin’s mission to redefine real estate in your favor has long included a special commitment to our customers of color. At Redfin’s 2020 kickoff meeting, we trained our agents and lenders on racism in real estate. In 2019, we successfully campaigned to eliminate pocket listings that can prevent minority homebuyers from seeing the most desirable homes for sale.
In 2018, we hosted an industry event on racism featuring our agents, customers and academics. We’ve supported controversial business taxes to fund more housing, and controversial zoning for more integrated neighborhoods. The representation of people of color in our workforce has increased from 34% in 2018 to 35% in 2019 to 36% in 2020; it’s now more than double the industry average.
But after George Floyd’s death, we came to a reckoning that our efforts haven’t been enough. Redfin decided last week to base a significant portion of next year’s executive bonuses on goals to increase the company’s overall diversity, and the diversity of our executives and board members. By the end of 2020, Redfin’s leaders have committed the first funding for a million-dollar-plus philanthropic effort to increase housing access for low-income or under-served communities.
This summer, we’re extending inclusive-management training from our brokerage’s managers to all our managers. And we’re exploring how we can keep broadening the range of lower-income neighborhoods and rural towns we serve.
But our first obligation is to fight for you the Black homebuyer — and also the veteran homebuyer, the Latinx homebuyer, the Asian homebuyer, the gay homebuyer, every homebuyer — using all our capabilities as top-producing local agents and lenders, and all of our technology: to embrace your aspirations, and to give you every advantage when buying a home, especially in neighborhoods where you’ve historically been shut out.
This may seem like the least we can do, but it’s what’s most important, and we don’t take it for granted. If we ever fail to treat you fairly, I want to know about it. You can contact me directly, and we’ll make it right. We believe in your dream of a better life, for your family, and for our society.
Best, Glenn | glenn (at) redfin (dot) com
On May 31, Redfin joined many other people and companies denouncing racism and racial violence. We believe Black Lives Matter and we support police reform, but we’re writing today about a more fundamental responsibility our company has to address racism: integration.
We can’t come together for a protest and then return to life in different worlds. We can heal our society’s great wound only if Black people and white people live side by side, with the same schools, grocery stores and job opportunities. This requires every real estate agent to approach our jobs differently.
Exclusivity isn’t an occasional problem in the real estate industry; it has been a founding premise. Homebuyers seeking a coveted neighborhood don’t pay $10,000 in fees for agents to complete a contract or show a home. An agent earns those fees by finding a way for her customers to get the loan others couldn’t, the listings others overlooked, the deal done with an agent she has known for years. The result can change a family’s trajectory across generations.
At Redfin, we’re creating a world where no one has to know the secret handshake to get the loan, the listing or the deal. In the meantime, our job as agents is to pursue these advantages for each of our customers with zeal. That obligates us to pursue each customer with zeal, whether that customer is Black or white, new to home-buying or an old hand.
Equal service should be the norm in our industry, but it isn’t. Industry-wide studies in 2018 and 2019 show that white people get much better real estate service than Black people with the same finances. That difference perpetuates segregated neighborhoods.
This is why Redfin’s mission to redefine real estate in your favor has long included a special commitment to our customers of color. At Redfin’s 2020 kickoff meeting, we trained our agents and lenders on racism in real estate. In 2019, we successfully campaigned to eliminate pocket listings that can prevent minority homebuyers from seeing the most desirable homes for sale.
In 2018, we hosted an industry event on racism featuring our agents, customers and academics. We’ve supported controversial business taxes to fund more housing, and controversial zoning for more integrated neighborhoods. The representation of people of color in our workforce has increased from 34% in 2018 to 35% in 2019 to 36% in 2020; it’s now more than double the industry average.
But after George Floyd’s death, we came to a reckoning that our efforts haven’t been enough. Redfin decided last week to base a significant portion of next year’s executive bonuses on goals to increase the company’s overall diversity, and the diversity of our executives and board members. By the end of 2020, Redfin’s leaders have committed the first funding for a million-dollar-plus philanthropic effort to increase housing access for low-income or under-served communities.
This summer, we’re extending inclusive-management training from our brokerage’s managers to all our managers. And we’re exploring how we can keep broadening the range of lower-income neighborhoods and rural towns we serve.
But our first obligation is to fight for you the Black homebuyer — and also the veteran homebuyer, the Latinx homebuyer, the Asian homebuyer, the gay homebuyer, every homebuyer — using all our capabilities as top-producing local agents and lenders, and all of our technology: to embrace your aspirations, and to give you every advantage when buying a home, especially in neighborhoods where you’ve historically been shut out.
This may seem like the least we can do, but it’s what’s most important, and we don’t take it for granted. If we ever fail to treat you fairly, I want to know about it. You can contact me directly, and we’ll make it right. We believe in your dream of a better life, for your family, and for our society.
Best, Glenn | glenn (at) redfin (dot) com
