Courtesy Kris Lindahl
Kris Lindahl arms wide open
Have you seen Kris Lindahl? He just passed me downtown, and earlier, I saw him near the airport. And I’ve got a buddy who swears he sees Lindahl six times a day around St. Paul. Heck, there are reports of Lindahl dangling from the backs of planes. Dude. Is. Everywhere.
Kris Lindahl is not actually everywhere. He is just one guy, after all. A human in his mid-30s. Still, it’s no exaggeration to say that he’s quickly become the most pervasive local real estate personality ever. Specifically, you’ll know his “Guaranteed Offer” ad, which features Lindahl grinning, arms spread wide, like the logo from Northeast wienery Uncle Franky’s. (What’s a “guaranteed offer”? Let’s just say terms and conditions may apply.)
But, who is this guy? Where did he come from, seemingly out of nowhere? And how in the world did he bankroll an advertising blitz that’s landed him on every plane, train, billboard, and bus in the state?
Who he is, it turns out, is a guy who started out in real estate in 2009, at the height of the Great Recession. He thrived in an upside-down housing market by mastering short sales. And when the market finally improved, he built a team with RE/MAX. And he was, apparently, quite good.
“When I was an individual agent, by myself, in 2013, I sold 147 homes,” Lindahl says. “In 2014, I sold 175, which was number one in the state for individual agents. So we had a huge foundation to invest in this. But people think, ‘Where did he borrow the money? What’s he hiding?’ We’re trained, when we see success happen somewhat fast, to think that there must be something wrong.”
Lindahl is wearing jeans and a hoodie that says “Be Generous,” the name of his community do-gooding 501(c)(3). He’s sitting across the table from me in a meeting room at the WeWork co-working space in Uptown. This fact, by itself, helps explain the funds he’s got to spend on his marketing monsoon. Despite becoming one of the largest firms in town, his real estate brokerage owns no real estate of its own.
Lindahl went out on his own in early 2018. And given all the brand equity in “Kris Lindahl,” he kept his name on the business. “Starting the journey all over again really didn’t make any sense,” he says.
Less than two years later, Kris Lindahl Real Estate employs and contracts with 140 people. And, according to real estate tracking site RealTrends.com, in its first year, the brokerage ranked 21st in the nation in total transactions, with 964.
Lindahl largely attributes these figures to those pesky ads. He claims he wanted something disruptive.
“When people are driving, it’s so different than anything they’ve ever seen,” he says. “I’m just wearing a dress shirt with my arms open, like I’m hanging out.”
Disappointingly, he doesn’t stand with his arms open once the whole time we hang out. But it does appear his stance has captured attention. The campaign began a little more than a year ago, with 100 outdoor ads. And it now counts more than 650 assets at any given time. “You have to stop driving in Minnesota and Wisconsin to not see us,” he says.
Lindahl won’t talk money. And it’s next to impossible to get a straight answer from outdoor marketing companies about what a billboard, bus, or train unit, let alone an airplane banner, costs. According to a local media buyer we asked, that’s partly because the variables are infinite.
For instance, four weeks on a billboard on I-94 can set you back $10K, whereas a similar billboard in Northeast might only cost $1,400. And if anyone qualifies for a bulk ad discount at this point, it’s surely Lindahl. Taking all those variables into account, the media buyer thinks Lindahl must be spending in the $2 million range annually. And that’s not counting the price to create the poster wrap for a train or bus, which can cost north of $20,000.
Annual sales into the near thousands of homes…an ad spend in the millions? Lindahl says he’s just getting started.
“In the next five years, we’ll become one of the biggest brokerages in the country,” says Lindahl. “Nobody has built a foundation and marketing strategy like we have. I’ve never seen it in the real estate space.”
Look around these days and Kris Lindahl is basically all you can see in any space.
