Redfin Launches Bay Area Sweet Digs

by Glenn Kelman | 12 Comments

After seeing readership grow by leaps and bounds in Seattle, Redfin launched Bay Area Sweet Digs today, a blogsite that provides eyewitness views of listings in neighborhoods all over the Bay. Check out what’s shaking in Fremont, Palo Alto & Mountain View, Berkeley, San Mateo & Redwood City, in San Francisco itself, or up north in Santa Rosa & Sonoma.

We hope you like it.

Already the site is getting plenty of attention, with reviews and notices at SocketSite, Inman, 3 Oceans, Transparent Real Estate (which says our reviews in Seattle have gone soft).

My favorite house reviewed so far has of course been the one in Berkeley. I also liked hearing about the Roman Catholic priest who fell in love with an artist.

If there’s neighborhoods you’d like to see or ideas for how we could make things better, let us know. Otherwise, sign up for a subscription!

Bonus material, from a friend of Redfin: a court ruling against an unscrupulous mover. There’s a misanthropic pleasure in reading about what this sadistic mover did to people and their possessions.

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Discussion

  • John

    Uhh…. do you guys have a map? why the exclusion of marin county?

  • Bret Hewett

    Glenn, of course you don’t need PR. Sweet Digs is your PR! I love it. Can’t wait to see it, and Redfin, here in Atlanta. And why aren’t you guys looking at what might be the hottest market of the year? Austin, TX.

    By the way, did you read the good news? “PENDING HOME SALES INDEX RISES”

    No doubt, the NAR will continue to make us feel good. They know full well they are building expectation into the market: that when forward-looking markets perceive the value of real assets appreciating, the market naturally responds–like a flock of sheep–by selling, or demanding more homes (first homes, newer homes, second homes, and so forth). This obviously stimulates construction, aggregate demand, speculative buying, higher prices, and chi-ching in the pockets of financially near-sighted NAR realtors.

    It’s enough to think the bubble–or even worse: the economy–would burst, right? That’s what we’ve been hearing. But you’ll have to read Governor Mishkin’s latest take, from the Forecaster’s Club of New York last month, on whether or not the imminent bubble-burst will produce financial instability:

    “House prices are far less volatile than stock prices, outright declines after a run-up are not the norm, and declines that do occur are typically relatively small. The loan-to-value ratio for residential mortgages is usually substantially below 1, both because the initial loan is less than the value of the house and because, in conventional mortgages, loan-to-value ratios decline over the life of the loan. Hence, declines in home prices are far less likely to cause losses to financial institutions, default rates on residential mortgages typically are low, and recovery rates on foreclosures are high. Not surprisingly, declines in home prices generally have not led to financial instability.”

    Whew! Thanks Frederic. I feel much better now. Except for the fact that no matter how stable our financial institutions are despite home price fluctuations, much of the market will continue to be fed–then burned–with low quality mortgages that enable home-buying in virtually any market condition. Hmm, what’s the NAR not telling us?

    Glenn, maybe Redfin could look into “Sweet Loans.”

  • http://blog.redfin.com Glenn Kelman

    Hi John,
    We’re still looking for a Marin County (and San Jose) real estate maven who writes well. And Bret, we hope to get to Austin and Atlanta soon… I also agree with you about mortgages. There’s just a limit to how much we can do well.

  • arvind

    redfin suggests that buyers can see houses in open houses. it’d help if redfin posts some link where buyers can find which houses are open? John L Scott has a listing of open houses, but that is not complete.

    Thanks.

  • http://blog.redfin.coim Bryan

    We are working on support for open house information from more MLSs. Today we have open house information for listings in San Francisco available on Redfin.

    We are also planning on adding searching for homes that have open houses in a future release.

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