At long last, Redfin has an iPhone application. And it is gorgeous and fast and free and freakishly powerful. Apple took ten days to approve it for the app store: Download it now for free! Why is a Redfin app such a big deal when there are already three or four real estate apps for… Read More
What always surprises me about folks in software is… How few people ask for help: meeting your peer at another company helps you steal ideas and makes you seem open-minded and — here’s the thing — you’ll believe them, and listen to them and act on what they say — and when you explain your… Read More
On the last Tuesday of every month, just before the Case-Shiller data is released at 6 a.m., we start writing Redfin’s customer newsletter. Which has become a bit of a production. It used to be about what’s happening at Redfin — and sometimes it still is — but most of our time now is spent covering… Read More
Young companies like Redfin often view successful start-ups in the same way that a little brother looks up to his big bro: full of admiration, wonder, and a touch of envy. Most of all, they just want to learn as much as possible from those that did something right. A few months ago, online jeweler… Read More
Case-Shiller data for June 2009 came out this morning. Once we adjust for seasonality — home prices tend to increase in the summer — we still see a nice gain in prices across every metropolitan area Redfin serves except for Seattle. For the first time since May 2006, seasonally adjusted prices increased month-over-month in the… Read More
Fred Wilson yesterday wrote about the analogies between startups and cards or sports, and decided he especially liked poker analogies. He watched his son try to decide whether to fold a bad poker hand, and said that venture investing often involves the same thought process. We’ll I’ve been in that situation too, except I wasn’t… Read More
At Redfin, we’ve long been opposed to dual agency, where the same agent represents both seller and buyer. This hasn’t always been an easy call because in some ways dual agency is more efficient. But it’s hard to represent both sides in a negotiation simultaneously, and the big problem is that it encourages the listing… Read More
TechFlash published a Redfin essay today asking folks in Seattle’s startup community to go ahead and disagree — yes by all means — but to stop being so nasty about it. Which of course has only incited more nastiness: 58 comments and counting. Why do you think Seattle has gotten into such a funk lately?… Read More