At one of our monthly Sweet Digs calls a blogger from Boston suggested there be a way for the team to collaborate on posting ideas and share documents. Fair enough. But then why is it that simple projects like this cause us to sweat a little? Maybe it’s the pioneering startup spirit in all of… Read More
The two most dreaded words in real estate today must be “low” and “baller.” So publishing a how-to guide for lowballers is a little like hanging a kick-me sign around our neck. We’re the ones who have to make deals happen, even when our client is convinced a house in Palo Alto is overpriced by… Read More
In September 2005, just as Redfin was raising its first round of funding, the Department of Justice sued the National Association of Realtors for developing a policy that allowed its members to share listing information with some brokers but not others. The policy was suspended while the lawsuit lumbered through federal court. And in the… Read More
My friend Geordie is a high-end real estate junkie. He cruises hot neighborhoods for open houses, even when he travels. He goes to every luxury condo party, and even picks up a few units here and there. When I joined Redfin he was ecstatic. Now he’d have someone to talk shop with. So, every time… Read More
The inevitable blog post about a blogger’s feelings on blogging doesn’t do much for me. The confessional tone is often only a more devious ploy for attention, and the solipsism of the post is an uncomfortable reminder of the solipsism of the form, with everyone talking to ourselves, while hardly anyone listens. So why, when… Read More
Home-buyers may spend as much money on their real estate agent as on their car, but many will choose their agent in less than an hour. According to a California Association of Realtors report, nearly half of all home-buyers hire the first agent they meet. This is probably because most of us would rather reject… Read More
A few months back, we released a new version of the site that let our customers download listing stats and past sales data to a spreadsheet. Then last Tuesday night, we began to require registration on Redfin’s site before allowing customers to download results from the map. People typically use this data when they’re doing… Read More
While in general we believe that more information is better, we recently learned how the information on our website can be used for indecorous purposes. The winner of DC Metrocentric’s most recent PriceChecker competition used Redfin to look up the price of a DC condo, rather than make a guess. DC Metrocentric is a blog… Read More
Everyone is dancing on Yahoo’s grave this morning, after Wall Street punished the company for rejecting Microsoft’s merger offer. But perhaps because I came of age when Yahoo! celebrated everything fun and weird about the Internet, or because it’s good to see a nerdy founder replace a bigshot media executive, or because Yahoo is an underdog, I smiled… Read More
Our discussion board, creatively named Redfin Forums after an agonizingly long brainstorm session, was started to give home buyers a place to gripe about home prices, share who their ace termite inspectors are, and ask us how buying a home online works. So it surprised us when customers would use the Forums to gush about… Read More