Did Iggy’s House burn down?
According to a report in Inman News, former employees of Iggy’s House/Buy Side Realty report that they are about to shut their doors. This flies in the face of reports in the same article by CEO Joseph Fox that they are just restructuring.
It would appear that freebies and loss leaders don’t always stimulate enough business to compensate for the expenses they incur. This is not a free car wash with a tank full of gas. Iggy’s would list a house for free on the hope that one or more of the buyers that called inquiring about their listing would buy a home through them. Wishful thinking in the worst real estate market in 15 years. That’s more like a tune up, brakes and a new set of tires with a tank full of gas and not only that….you don’t have to buy the gas until after you get all that stuff. Now granted, today a tank full of gas is not cheap but unfortunately when they refund 75% of the buyer’s commission, their service was pretty cheap; so cheap in fact that it could never compensate for the free listings they gave away.
Where did Iggy’s go wrong? Most likely their founders are to blame for having inflated egos in a deflated economy. Joe and Avi Fox got lucky once. They sold their online stock brokerage Web Street to ETrade and thought they could repeat their success in Real Estate.
ETrade bought webstreet for $45 million and the Fox brothers were reported to have earned $9 million each on the sale; certainly enough to live comfortably for the rest of their lives without starting a hair brain real estate model that gives away most of it’s services for nothing or next to nothing. Then again, these are the same two guys mentioned in a 2005 press release about launching Stand-Up Comedy TV. Iggy’s house was certainly a comedy…..of errors.
FFMLS Staff Writer