High tech real estate brokerage Redfin‘s latest ad campaign features a familiar face — Bobby Berk, the design expert on Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot.
The show follows the Fab Five, of which Berk is a part, in their quest to help men and women makeover their lives. Berk is the show’s design expert and is in charge of redecorating the home in which the star of each episode lives.
As part of the new campaign, Berk talks about his experience buying a home in L.A. with Redfin agent Nadine Guyaux — he and his husband, Dewey, bought a house in East Los Angeles while the third season of the show was in the filming stages.
“I instantly hit ‘Share’ on my app and texted it to my husband,” Berk says in the promotional video. “And he was like ‘Yes!'”
According to Redfin’s vice president of marketing, Lisa Taylor, the brokerage regularly hosts campaigns in which buyers who used a Redfin agent are featured on its site and social media accounts. As Berk knows a thing or two about houses through his design work, the connection felt particularly appropriate.
“Though Bobby is a celebrity, his experience is typical for thousands of home buyers and sellers who work with Redfin,” Taylor told Inman, adding that Berk had reached out to Redfin about a potential campaign after closing the purchase. “We run a lot of customer testimonial marketing campaigns, so we were excited to spread the word about how Redfin’s technology paired with our full-service agents led Bobby to his dream home.”
Redfin declined to comment on any matters concerning Berk’s compensation for the campaign.
In a blog post, Berk explains that he wanted to buy a home outside downtown Los Angeles but on the hill. It was important to them to have a view of the city but be away from any major streets. But as homebuyers are aware, Berk and his husband couldn’t find everything they wanted in one house: The home they ended up buying didn’t have a pool so they’re planning to build one.
Berk advises those looking for a home to make a list of features they absolutely have to have — that way, you can view homes keeping specific must-haves in mind.
“With my busy schedule, I knew I didn’t have time to worry about the kinds of issues that often come up with an older home,” Berk writes. “And while I loved the character of some of the older houses, we opted for a new home that wouldn’t require a ton of work, and would be a blank canvas for me to make changes over time as we settled in.”