- In honor of April Fools' Day, three real estate influencers played jokes of their own.
- Homes.com rebranded to trulowtor.com, Realtor.com now sells pet homes, and Rob Hahn tricked readers into clicking a link that was a blast from the past.
It’s April Fool’s Day, which means that millions of people will be at the mercy of the jokesters in their lives.
Not to be left out of the fun, some of real estate’s heavy hitters are proving that the industry has a funny bone, too — just check out the joke we played on unsuspecting Inman attendees at ICNY 2016.
Trulowtor.com — for millennials, by millennials
Homes.com sent out a media alert announcing it would be rebranding to trulowtor.com, which is a mix of Trulia, Zillow and realtor.com’s names.
“Yeah, we have a pretty great domain name right now, but it’s way too memorable, simple and our competitors — most of which made their names up based on Scrabble letter values — are telling us our name is ‘silly,'” said the trulowtor.com team. “Much as we respect those folks, it’s time to kick some real-estate-domain butt, so we’ve decided to rebrand, reinvent, refresh, rejigger and re-domain.”
The “new” brand claims to be for millennials, by millennials, and they promise free kitchen snacks. Who could pass that up?
Trulowtor’s home page.
More on what led to this ingenious strategic branding strategy (hitting the Smoothie King sauce pretty hard and a serious whiteboard brainstorming sesh) here.
Because our pets deserve the best
Tired of your cat, dog or other animal friend taking up your space? Realtor.com now lists pet properties for your four-legged friends so they can be party animals in their very own home.
Just click the “meow” button to see breathtaking homes nestled under lush trees, tree houses with views to die for or an underwater retreat for the Nemo in your life. For a cheap 275,000 biscuits or 325,000 balls of string, your pet can live in the lap of luxury.
Realtor.com’s pet listings.
Never gonna give you up
An image from Rob Hahn’s April Fool’s blog post.
The last April Fool’s joke of the bunch comes from Rob Hahn, aka The Notorious R.O.B. He published a blog post about presidential hopeful Bernie Sander’s universal housing plan, and readers who clicked on (any of) the links throughout the story got a special surprise straight from the ’80s.
Do you have any pranks planned? Share them with us in the comments below.
