It's Free Real Estate

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About

"It's Free Real Estate" is a line from a Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! sketch. It has grown into a popular GIF and a popular Bait and Switch -style video punchline on Youtube.

Origin

The sketch "Free House For You, Jim" appeared in the March 24th, 2009 episode of Tim & Eric, "Presidents." The sketch format parodies a commercial by having the title actors claim they have a free house for one person, Jim Boonie. The ad, shown below, ends with Tim Heidecker whispering "It's free real estate," to the camera.

Spread

Over the following years, "It's Free Real Estate" remained a popular in-joke for the Tim & Eric fandom. It first appeared on Youtube in 2009,^[1] and Adult Swim uploaded the entire sketch to Youtube in 2012.^[2] References to it have appeared on Yahoo Answers^[3] and in IGN forums.^[4] It also appeared in several threads on the Tim & Eric subreddit.^[5]^[6]

The quote began to grow in popularity as a bait-and-switch punchline in the summer of 2016, following an April 29th Youtube video by Flameoffury^[7] that incorporates the clip into "Wait (The Whisper Song)" by the Ying Yang Twins (shown below).

The video was posted to /r/youtubehaiku^[8] by Flameoffury on June 21st, where it gained over 4,300 points, 91% upvotes as of September 15th, 2016. Following that, "It's free real estate" appeared in similar videos, where a whisper is replaced with the quote. For example, it has appeared in a remix of Gorillaz' "Clint Eastwood" (below, left) and Shrek (below, right).

Image Macros

On January 17th, 2017, ShitpostBot 5000 ^[9] user REAGANOMIX published a screenshot of the sketch to their database.

Several months later, on April 15th, Tumblr ^[10] user literal-ghost posted the image in a thread about "The most disturbing image of the Christ Child that I’ve ever come across." The post (shown below) received more than 98,000 notes in one year.

Later that year, on October 13th, Redditor ^[11] Bread_Princess posted an screenshot from the video game A Hat in Time above the image of Tim Heidecker. The post (shown below, left) received more than 50 points (100% upvoted) in six months.

On April 2nd, 2018, Redditor^[12] dylantus posted the image under the caption "native americans: *exist* american government:" The post (shown below, center) received more than 19,000 points (94% upvoted) and 190 comments in six days.

Two days later, Redditor^[13] 69Spaghetti69 posted a variation of the meme, replacing the 91reference to Native Americans with Europe in World War II. The post (shown below, right) received more than 27,000 points (91% upvoted) and 180 comments.