There are times when traditional agents’ mania to defend 6% becomes psychotic. Oddly, this is when I feel the deepest connection to the industry. Take for example, Bernice L. Ross, author of a 300+ book called “Waging War on Real Estate’s Discounters.” The book promises to teach agents “tired of having to defend your commission… Read More
Redfin’s customers made the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last Saturday, in an article that turned out to be the paper’s most e-mailed story. Phuong Cat Le, the very sharp PI reporter, interviewed us in a warm conference room crammed with AV equipment, beginning with “your competitors don’t seem to like you very much”… Read More
Grumbling about sub-audible ring-tones used by teenagers, The New Yorker’s Louis Menand (pictured below) this week writes about real estate as one of the final stages in the aging process: “it’s not long until you find that you are unable to stop talking about real estate, which is the first step down an increasingly rocky… Read More
A few weeks back, the New York Times happened on to the story of Redfin’s Ryan Erickson, a Project Gotham Racing national video game champion we hired as a real estate assistant. Also a licensed agent, Ryan helps out with closing paperwork and sometimes zips around town to get our customers into houses. But in… Read More
In the early, crazy days of Redfin Direct, when the whole office went bananas every time we got an offer (which was usually bogus, and was often breathlessly announced in the middle of a meeting with skeptical venture capitalists), we encountered plenty of resistance from listing agents. Some called customers about to close on a… Read More
A New York Times editorial (“Commission Accomplished“) by a very sober but friendly looking Brookings Institution senior fellow, Robert E. Litan, highlights the model that Redfin pioneered, an online real estate brokerage, and discusses the anti-competitive forces arrayed against it. The article makes a comparison that has long been a Redfin favorite, between the stock… Read More
A Finnish company called Igglo has launched a site like Redfin’s, except that it allows home buyers to make bids on unlisted properties. You browse a map to identify a property in which you’re interested, then make a bid. Home-owners who visit Igglo can then see what people think their house is worth, and even… Read More
We received another fantastic entry for our War Stories feature this week. This one is from Redfin commited user and longtime booster Peter C. He and his wife were making a big move to the East Coast in 1999 and came up with a creative trade that sealed the deal. Here it is, in his… Read More
Meet Tom Rabideau and Nicole Rendahl, the stars of this installment of Maniac Emptor (Emptor, a buyer and Maniac, a Maniac for Redfin). They’re both practicing attorneys. Tom moonlights as a commercial pilot when he’s not practicing law. Cool. Nicole is the bigger Redfin addict. Way cool. Their winning offer resulted in a snazzy Belltown… Read More
Is there a more bizarre and depressing circus than a tradeshow? The absolutely sexless hotel. The Tote Bag of Crapola. The inflatable enthusiasm. My first trip to an Inman real estate conference was last summer in New York. I slept on a friend’s couch. I got drunk with a Dostoevsky scholar who admitted at the… Read More