April 23, 2012
Hooray! Eighteen months after launching our website and mobile tools for Austin, Redfin has begun offering Austin service from our own Austin-based agents. Now Austinites can buy or sell a home via a Redfin agent paid based on customer satisfaction, and armed with the latest technology for scheduling tours, pricing homes, optimizing listing traffic and collaborating throughout escrow. Working with Redfin, Austinites can also save as much as half the commission charged by traditional agents.
Austin should be a perfect market for us, with plenty of real estate innovators, lots of progressive consumers, lots of weirdness, and plenty of technology to boot. We like Austin’s size too, as Redfin has already thrived in places like Portland and Boston, where the territory is a little easier to cover.
Redfin’s Austin business is led by superstar Cyndy Stewart, who has eight years of local experience. Cyndy is building a team of four folks to serve Austin, covering all of Travis and Williamsoncounties, as well as the towns of Wimberley and Dripping Springs in Hays County, south of Austin.
In all of these places, we’ll continue to give customers a choice of partner agents, too, especially where we still aren’t local or when we get too busy. For most of Hays County as well as Bastrop County, we’ll rely exclusively on partners.
For us, combining direct and partner service is the only way to build a balanced business, able to serve new customers in any neighborhood at the drop of a hat, without hiring more agents than we can support year-round, through thick and thin. That hasn’t changed.
What is new with Austin is that we waited 18 months to hire our own agents. Waiting is much better for customers than the old Redfin model. For example, when we launched Atlanta the old way in December 2009, we hired one guy to scramble around central Georgia, which is about seven times larger than Austin.
That one Atlanta guy spent his life driving and hoping for more business. Since it took time for Redfin’s traffic to grow, we didn’t have enough customers to justify a larger team. But almost nobody wanted to work with an agent trying to cover all of Atlanta, so customers were hard to come by too. It was a classic chicken-and-egg problem.
The solution we developed for Austin is the chicken then the eggs, launching a website and monitoring the traffic before deciding to hire agents in force. We’ve always been clear about this plan in Austin, yet beginning first as a website that referred customers to partners naturally raised a ruckus among real estate brokers. It’s a privilege to be a broker in Austin, and to participate in the local Multiple Listing Service used to share listing data.
At a conference in Austin just a few months ago, some of Austin’s thought leaders asked me how can we claim to make real estate better if we’re just another online middle-man, coming between the agent and his customer? Everyone in technology worries Redfin will simply be a service business, and everyone in real estate worries we’ll simply be a web business. The truth is that we go back and forth, not because we can’t make up our mind, but because it’s the best way for us to serve our customers.
We’ll see how it works out in Austin. I bet it’ll be a smash hit. If you’d like to meet the new Redfin agents or our long-standing Austin partners, we’re having everyone from the local real estate scene over for a little party on May 2, with lots of Redfin execs flying into Austin from Seattle, and an engineer or two as well. Welcome Cyndy and howdy Austin!
December 6, 2011
Over on the national blog, we just posted another big analysis of hundreds of thousands of listings and sales. Here are the numbers for Austin, where winter is still a winning time to list your home a better chance of selling, and a better price (but not necessarily a quick sale):
July 14, 2011
In case you missed it over on the corporate blog, Redfin has just launched our Android app!
(And there was much rejoicing.)
Android fans have been very, very vocal about wanting their own Redfin app, and thanks to the hard work of a crack team of engineers, the day has arrived.
Go find out more! Go! Go you crazy kids! Be free!
Photo courtesy Stéfan via Flickr.
July 8, 2011
I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I spent mine lying on the couch, mewling like a sick kitten, but that’s neither here nor there.
I was a Redfin addict before I was an employee, and sometimes I forget that there’s a lot of stuff on our site that not everybody knows about. Some of these are big things, like the fact that we’re a real live brokerage with real live agents. Others are a bit nittier and grittier, like the sheer number of different ways we try to slice and dice data to share with anyone who wants it.
Example: Our Austin neighborhoods and zip codes page (or see other nearby cities). This page doesn’t get an awful lot of traffic, but it should, because it’s just obscenely useful. It basically shows you the median list price, median price per square foot, sale-to-list percentage, and number of homes for sale in the entire local area, broken down both by neighborhood name and by zip code.
You can also sort this information by any of the above columns; if you want to see every neighborhood sorted by sale-to-list percentage, just click on that column header and the data will re-sort.
And if you click on any of the neighborhood names or zip codes, we’ll show you another page with information specific to that area, including:
- New homes for sale
- Upcoming open houses
- Price-reduced homes
- Recently-sold homes
- Most expensive homes
- Least expensive homes
- And most popular (on Redfin) homes
This neighborhood/zip code profile page also gives you trend charts and graphs that you can customize and even import to your own website or blog, links to related forums posts, comparisons with other nearby areas, and profiles of area schools.
If you haven’t seen these pages, you should check them out. And if you’re already using them, you should drop us a line below to let us know what you think of them. Ideas and suggestions are always welcome! (Cruel, cutting remarks are not particularly welcome, but are taken with a stiff upper lip.)
June 23, 2011
Hey all,
So, my original plan was to write a big long post going over every last nook ‘n cranny of our reader poll results in painstaking detail. But then I remembered that I basically have the attention span of a fruit fly.
So instead, I’m just going to post Pretty Bar Graphs of the results, and also give you a link so you can download the full excel version of the responses.
Without Further Ado… Pretty Bar Graph #1
As you can see, Updates on the Local Market was our big big winner, with around 425 votes. Trailing the pack was Profiles of Agents, with four votes.
And Now… Pretty Bar Graph #2
(…in which our hero discovers which feature types are most popular among readers.)
This one was a bit of a shockeroni for me, because I really thought video was going to dominate here. I mean, you kids love the YouTube and the Hulu and whatnot, right?
But I was wrong, as is often the case. Graphics and Illustrations came in first, and Nope, Just Articles was second, because you people love your precious words. So my next blog post will be a six-thousand-word essay on the impact of the Battle of Hastings on the 2000-2007 Real Estate Bubble. It should be riveting.
Point/Counterpoint was also pretty popular (with one truly awesome person actually suggesting that I team up with Jane Curtin), as was Instant Polls/Surveys.
Not Video, though. Or Contests. Which means I got my legs waxed for nothing.
Holy Cow! Guess What? It’s Pretty Bar Graph #3!
(…in which our hero runs out of clever subtitles and considers going to the supply closet for a Twix bar.*)
Okay, so this is where I asked about the name of Sweet Digs, because I’ll be honest with you, around the office it’s kind of a running joke. And not the funny kind of running joke, like when Steve Carrell would say “That’s what she said!” on The Office. No, more like the painfully tragic kind of running joke, where you’re laughing from a nauseating mix of nervousness and contempt, like anytime anyone said anything on the entire eight-season run of Full House.
But another surprise, people still like the name Sweet Digs, and the chart above proves it.
So there are all the pretty bar graphs, like I promised. If you’d like to read the full excel details, which includes all the free-form responses (minus identifying, info, of course), just click here to download it.
Whew! Thanks everyone.
*It was delicious.
June 20, 2011
As part of their neighborhood stabilization program, Fannie Mae is offering buyers’ assistance through a couple of different programs, HomePath and First Look.
HomePath
HomePath helps buyers buy covering their closing costs, up to 3.5% of the home’s purchase price.
To qualify, buyers must be purchasing a HomePath property; this is a home that is owned by Fannie Mae, usually as the result of a foreclosure or owner forfeiture. Buyers need to make the initial offer on the home on or after June 14, 2011, and the purchase must close by October 31, 2011; initial offers made prior to June 14 are not eligible.
First Look
In addition to HomePath program, Fannie Mae also offers an edge to buyers hoping to purchase a primary residence (as opposed to investors, or buyers looking for a second home). Under the First Look program, only offers from primary-residence buyers will be considered during the first 15 days that a Fannie-owned REO property is on the market.
Redfin agents and partner agents are always available to help you make a purchase on a Fannie Mae-owned property.
June 17, 2011
Hey everyone!
I wanted to say a big fat wet sloppy thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s reader poll. There were nearly 800 of you, and almost everyone had something useful, informative, or enlightening to contribute.
(There was, of course, a small but vocal minority who did nothing but make dirty jokes and request that we start posting illicit photos, but that’s life on the intertubes.)
We got so many responses with so many good suggestions, in fact, that I’m basically drowning over here. I promise I’ll give y’all a nice, thorough run-down of the results, but as for today, I’m going to give you the Xtreme Reader’s Digest version.
Big Winners:
Updates on the local market, market statistics, and profiles of local neighborhoods were the top three requests, in that order. Message received. You want more hard data, more often, and more tightly focused on the neighborhood level.
Interesting Thing I Noticed:
We had a lot of requests for things that are already on Redfin, which tells me that we’re not doing a great job making that stuff easy to find. That’s pretty much my fault.
For instance, tips about home buying was a very popular request, and we have an entire free online guide for home buyers right here. It has a ton of information on the entire home-buying process, much of it tailored to each individual Redfin market.
Other Interesting Thing I Noticed:
Readers seem to fall into two camps: people who want more “fluff” (like cool homes, tips on design, stories from agents, etc.) and people who want no fluff at all and think fluff is stupid and would punch me in the face right now if I would just stop saying “fluff.”
I don’t think there’s a way to make every post appeal to everybody, but it does seem like more variety will keep everyone intermittently not-unhappy. And what more could you ask, really?
By Popular Request:
Finally, a lot of people asked in the free-form comments why we don’t just go back to the old days, when we had lots of different bloggers writing content for every city’s version of Sweet Digs. This was all before my time, but basically it was just too big an operation for us to handle at that point, and we needed to focus more on the core business (which is, of course, panda-cloning.)
We also had the loose-cannon issue crop up a couple times; bloggers saying things in the Redfin name that were completely ridiculous, like that we were cloning pandas.
But moving forward, we do want to distribute the writing work on our blogs out a bit more, both among our agents and (possibly, don’t quote me on this) among non-employees.
How will we approach that? No idea. I’m making this up as I go.
More soon on the survey results, including a downloadable spreadsheet of the results (stripped of any identifying reader info, naturally).
Until then, thanks again, and keep the good ideas coming.
June 9, 2011
I’m just going to level with y’all.
It’s one of my performance goals to write one of these blog posts every week, and every week, I approach the goal with a healthy heapin’ spoonful of a little something I like to call dread, or as they call it in German, dredenscheiningruvenshtocken.*
Now at first I thought that this dread was just some sort of performance anxiety, but I had an epiphany yesterday. Okay, maybe epiphany is a little strong. Maybe “duh-moment” would be more accurate.
I have no idea what you guys and gals want to read about. None at all.
But I’m not supposed to admit that, right? I’m supposed to just keep trying different articles and then track your pageviews like I’m some sort of criminal mastermind, then slowly and gradually hit on a winning formula of pure crowd-pleasingness; drawing you in, addicting you to content without you ever even knowing it. Mwa ha ha.
Frankly, that sounds like a lot of work, and really, I’m not the mastermind type. So I thought I’d just ask. Nicely.
So, could I please ask you to take a minute to fill out a little survey I came up with? Please? Pleeeeeease? (It helps if you picture me staring up at you with big puppy-dog eyes. It works especially well if you picture me as an actual puppy.**)
Take the Sweet Digs survey!
I can’t really promise you any toys or treats or anything, but I can promise that I’ll do my best to give you something worthwhile to read. And then everybody wins.
Thanks all!
*Not real German. Sorry Germany!
**Seriously, can you imagine that? Some cute puppy sitting at a keyboard, typing away with his little paws? That would be adorable!
June 2, 2011
Imagine you’d bought a home, and one day you went into the attic while chasing after a raccoon and–
What? No. I don’t know why you’re chasing a raccoon. Maybe it stole your sandwich.*
Anyway, you climb into the attic, wrestle the raccoon into submission, reclaim your sandwich, and then look over and see a tire jack holding your roof up. Wouldn’t you be a little upset? Even more so than you were about the sandwich?
This is why we have home inspectors. To inspect homes. For things like tire jacks and raccoon colonies.
You might think that you don’t need an inspector. You might say to yourself: “Self, I know how to tell if there’s something wrong with a house.”
But you’re probably wrong, because:
A: A good home inspector has the training and experience needed to identify hundreds of problems with a home’s structure, foundation, wiring, plumbing, ventilation, roofing, and other key components. Many of these problems are not obvious to the casual (or even business-casual) eye.
-and-
B: Home inspectors go into places like crawlspaces and attics, and spiders live in those places. Spiders.
We talked to over a dozen home inspectors, collected more than 200 images of common home inspection issues, and put that info into a neat little interactive home. It won’t make you a home inspection expert, but it will give you an idea of what to look for when touring a home. And hopefully it’ll help you realize how important a good inspection can be before you buy that home.
Don’t wait for a sandwich-stealing raccoon to show you the value of a home inspector. Check out our Interactive Home Inspection right now.
*It’s a roast beef sandwich. Unless you’re a vegan. Then it’s kelp or hay or something.
(Photo courtesy Gary Cornia & Cornia Consulting, LLC.)
May 26, 2011
Today, we’re officially launching the remaining sections of our Home Buying Guide. This is something we’ve been working on for a long, long time, and it feels good to get it out the door.
That’s not to say we won’t continue trying to make the guide an even better resource for home buyers; we’ll be tweaking, polishing, adding to, and editing this thing until the next ice age. If you have suggestions, comments, or questions about any of our HBG content, please leave a comment here, or on any page of the guide itself.
But we are starting to gear up for our next big guide project — the Redfin Home Seller’s Guide. We’ll be packing it full of useful information, with a heavier emphasis on interactive features, quizzes, graphics, illustrations, and other goodies.
Here’s where you come in: if you’re selling a home, what’s the stuff that keeps you up at night? What can’t you find good information about? What’s confusing? What’s frustrating? What do you wish you’d known three months ago?
Finally, if you’d like to be involved in providing customer feedback on preview versions of the guide as it’s developed, just drop a comment here and let us know. We’d love your input, and if we choose you to be in our customer feedback group, we’ll send you a free Redfin T-shirt.
