In a few minutes, Redfin will post on its website a short notice that we cannot take new listings:
From June 16 to July 8, Redfin is not accepting new listing customers. You can submit listing information now if you’d like, but we will not contact you or list your property until July 9. If Redfin has already committed to listing your property, you can be sure that we will continue to meet your highest expectations.
But why are we turning away new business? In Southern California, new listing business increased by a factor of ten in one month; in the Bay Area it tripled. Continuing to take new listings would strain our ability to offer customers great service. Since one of our core principles is putting customers before profits, we are focusing on the customers we already have.
We will continue to represent buyers because our buyers’ agents still have the capacity to serve an increasing number of new customers well. We will only resume listing properties when we can offer every new listing customer the same fanatical service that got us this far in the first place, which we expect will take us a few weeks. You can send us feedback via our blog or by using a form to send us e-mail.
Thanks for your support, and we apologize for this interruption in our service.
Regards,
Glenn
Dave, Mike and I decided to do this after a conference call last night about California, where several of our agents have been working for weeks without a day off. Some of the increase in demand is simply seasonal, some of it is the result of being on 60 Minutes, some of it seems like a freak of nature.
At company meetings, we always talk about how happy customers are more important to our long-term success than profits, and so we felt that we had no choice but to stop taking new listing business. Restaurants and planes fill up, doctors sometimes can’t take new patients. You can add more tables or seats, you can rush through appointments, but the people already committed to you don’t appreciate it.
Someone already asked me if this is a PR stunt. No, it is not. If it were, we would have announced it on Monday morning, with a press release, during a competitive lull. We are discussing this here on the blog on the assumption that people would find out about it sooner or later, and they may as well find out from us. We got the word out as soon as we could; a few engineers have had to stay late to make changes to our site. Thank you Savan, Shahaf and Jeff for giving it up on a Friday night, to Cynthia too.
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