Redfin CEO promises to ‘drink our own urine’ if mortgage rates don’t fall

He really said that: When asked about the company’s “Plan B” if mortgage rates don’t fall, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman responded, “Plan B is to drink our own urine or our competitors’ blood, stay in the foxhole.”

This wasn’t at some informal, off-the-record gathering. It was on Redfin’s second-quarter earnings call earlier this week, the kind of call where executives usually stick to blandly optimistic platitudes — a call that gets transcribed on investor relations websites.

The real estate website’s earnings were better than expected, but Wall Street analysts were focused on prospects for the larger housing market. At one point, Kelman compared the current market to “The Twilight Zone,” declaring, “I can’t remember a time when [mortgage] rates came down this far, this fast, and the market has been so muted in its response. And we just have to believe that it will [go up].”

To be clear, he’s hoping the market improves, but he isn’t counting on it.

After the aforementioned promise to drink various bodily fluids, Kelman added, “The last earnings call ended with me singing a line from a Who song, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’ where I had said we’re not banking on low rates when other people had thought they might come down […] We’re ready to take share if the market grows, we’re ready to take share if it doesn’t, but we’re not going to ease off.”

Then finally, right before the call ended, Kelman expressed a little regret over his choice of words: “We’ll drink our urine before the blood. Actually, I wish I just hadn’t said that. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”