The clever, under-stated Clay Nielsen was the first to answer Redfin’s call for “war stories,” tales of intrigue and derring-do to give Redfin shoppers an angle on winning deals. This one is *good*. Here’s Clay story, in his own words: In May of 2005, my wife and I decided it was time to start looking… Read More
Best blog entries of the past 24 hours: –> Guy Kawasaki’s “crazy stories” about nuns driving schoolbuses filled with steel, Virgin encouraging its customers to fly BA and First Interstate’s rolling trucks up to a competitors’ branches. I once heard that Virgin was going to debut in San Francisco by flying a 747 under the… Read More
An article in Slate panning a Century 21 ad has generated an avalanche of reader bombast. People get upset. A disgruntled agent asks Slate, “did you go to journalism school?” and goes on to complain, in the mangled syntax typical of online rants, about Slate’s “grammatical issues.” Read More
Redfin got a nice plug on the national version of NPR’s Morning Edition & the phones have been ringing off the hook all day ever since… listen to the three-minute piece here (click Listen). Redfin enters the picture at 1:45. Also, many thanks to the folks who came out at 6:30 a.m. for the NWEN… Read More
A few folks have found the term “house porn” — our daily feature on newly listed mansions, shacks, and screaming deals — unappealing. What’s disconcerting to us is the idea that our use of this phrase might be construed as sanctifying something else, which there is nothing funny about. We apologize, and hope that you… Read More
Redfin takes the stage tomorrow for the Northwest Entrepreneurs’ Network April Venture breakfast. On the agenda is a discussion of how enterprise software and consumer Internet sites differ, and how Silicon Valley and Seattle differ. We’ll also dive into what I did before Redfin, co-founding Plumtree Software, and what I learned from that. Hope to… Read More
Century 21 is running a weird new ad in which a sinister wife pressures her chubby, hapless husband into buying more house than they can afford. The husband looks miserable. The tension between the two crests when the wife, neck muscles flaring, says: “Suzanne [the agent] researched this.” Then, to our surprise, we learn that… Read More
Dustin Luther writes an excellent article on why real estate is a long-tail market, arguing that no single agent can have dominant market-share given the variety of inventory. Three thoughts: In real estate, it’s all tail: the long tail was originally developed to distinguish best-sellers sold in volume at Wal-Mart from indy titles on Amazon…. Read More
Redfin hits the road tonight to present to 60 UW Business School students who will try to figure out how to make our site more viral, and how to improve the quality of our home-buying service, Redfin Direct. We’ll let you know what the students come up with but in the meantime if you have… Read More
The Seattle Times’s Elizabeth Rhodes published on Friday an excellent analysis of why prices have continued to increase in Seattle even as sales have decreased: the number of listings has declined as quickly as sales have. Since it seems like almost every house in Seattle has turned over at least once in the past couple… Read More