Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt renew their argument that real estate brokers aren’t worth 6%, citing a study (PDF) conducted by Stanford economist B. Douglas Bernheim and one of his graduate students, Jonathan Meer, which shows that using a broker has no effect on a home’s average selling price. We are an (online) broker ourselves,… Read More
After arguing that we should let foreclosures run their course, we saw just what this would look like in a bank-owned Oakland listing, first noticed by one of the Redfin Forums participants. In the listing photos, a man sits in front of the house, seemingly with his head in his hands. In the floor of… Read More
Slate’s Daniel Gross complained last Friday that recent proposals to declare a temporary moratorium on foreclosures will only slow the process of price discovery, which is how the market figures out what an asset is worth. Whether we like it or not, Gross argues, housing prices still need to come down. A foreclosure is the… Read More
We’ve been getting local about our markets to see which towns should be hot spots for Redfin. We’re sharing the analysis for all you data junkies out there. Here’s what we already know about Redfin buyers: they’re very likely to work in high-tech fields, they usually have a college degree, and they typically buy a… Read More
In one night, Michael Arrington wrote a dazzling refutation of this week’s post on leaving Silicon Valley for Seattle. I have often wondered what midnight fuel propels him through essays that are as pure, perfect and straight as an arrow, which is now plunged to my great surprise into my tiny, heaving chest… But Michael… Read More
The New York Times reports Friday that alone among all the cities hoping to be the next Silicon Valley, Seattle “is actually doing it.” But the Times didn’t talk to iLike President Hadi Partovi, or Zillow.com CEO Rich Barton, both entrepreneurs who, like many of the folks at Redfin, shuttle between Seattle and Silicon Valley…. Read More
The Illinois General Assembly is now considering HB4313, a bill that would make it illegal for any licensed real estate agents to “give or pay cash rebates, cash gifts or cash prizes to an unlicensed person who is a party to a contract to buy or sell real estate.” This would make it illegal for… Read More
Reacting to Thursday’s announcement about the new “Freakish Depth” release of Redfin.com, Austin asset manager Lani Anglin-Rosales wrote an analysis of Redfin’s brand for national real estate magazine Agent Genius: Redfin is actually designed to appeal to GenY by using hip vernacular like “Redfin’s goal is to delight our audience of hard-core real estate fanatics… Read More