April 25, 2008

Los Angeles Real Estate: Hot or Not?

On Monday, we looked at what makes a property hot in Boston, so we’re closing the week with a look at a market on the other coast: Los Angeles. The big question: will we see the same trends coast to coast?

We found there really are (hot) pockets of sunshine in the Los Angeles housing market, and this is not according to my trusty Magic 8-ball. We analyzed 2,364 real estate records for single-family listings in Los Angeles County, Calif. that entered the market between Oct. 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008, and sold.

We looked at the Los Angeles real estate market next because, well, you asked.

Here’s a rundown of the neighborhoods with the most listings that sold within seven days on the market; the numbers in parentheses calculate the hot properties as a percentage of the total houses that sold in those areas:

• Beverly Center, Miracle Mile: 12 (26%)
• Brentwood: 12 (27%)
• Los Angeles, Southwest: 10 (12%)
• Sunset Strip, Hollywood Hills West: 10 (11%)
• Westchester: 9 (17%)

For the areas where there were a significant number of hot properties, we compared the listings that sold in seven days or less with everything else that sold in those areas. Our goal was to develop a clear portrait of the hot property, so our buyers would know when they really had to hop to it. And here’s what we found:

• Beds and baths were the same for both types: there was no pattern in terms of bedrooms and bathrooms. Hot and “not” (not properties took more than eight days to sell) properties both had three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The coasts agree!
• Hot properties are bigger, slightly: The median square footage for hot properties was only slightly larger (.2%) than not properties, but the median lot size was 3% larger. Clearly, the LA sprawl doesn’t mean buyers get more space. Boston homebuyers got 13% larger lots with pretty similar sized homes – 1,669 square feet in Boston vs. 1,735 square feet in LA.
• Hot properties are newer: the median year built (1948) for hot properties was four years earlier than for the nots. Bostonians bought slightly older homes, but maybe that’s because most east coast homes are older?
  Hot properties are expensive: it turns out that hot properties weren’t exactly priced to move. In fact, the median list price of hot properties ($1.1 million) was 16% higher. And the high price isn’t just because the houses are bigger: the median dollars per square foot was nearly 16% higher for hot properties ($633) as compared to the nots ($548). The median list price of Boston’s hot properties was $459,000 … you can get two for the price of one in Boston.

There wasn’t a huge difference in the days on market for the hot areas (43) and the entire Los Angeles market (45), but, on average, the hot properties sold in almost five days (Boston hot properties sold in about 4.5 days).

The bottom line is that hot properties are slightly bigger, newer and more expensive. There are distinct areas and house types where properties still sell fast, which continues to support our reason for doing this study in the first place — the real estate market isn’t really clinically depressed; it’s more of a split personality, with the good stuff selling fast, and the rest languishing.

Did you just buy a home in one of these neighborhoods? What was your experience?

Bonus link: The Wall Street Journal reports on the heartwarming side of the housing bust. [Warning: shameless Redfin plug] Read about a couple who escaped their 100-mile, LA-freeway commute.

January 7, 2008

What Would You Do With $10 Million?

Pay Green Bay Packer Brett Favre’s salary for the year – what I wouldn’t give to get him on the Seattle Seahawks’ payroll for Saturday’s showdown. Take a spin in the General Lee – admit it, you’ve practiced the smooth, window-entry move like Bo and Luke Duke. Spend a night (and a half) together with the Rolling Stones – maybe Mick will tell you just how he gets into those tight pants.

At Redfin, we decided the money was better spent on more important things. Actually, more than 1,000 more important things such as weddings, renovations, larger homes and new furniture for our customers.

By the end of 2007, we refunded more than $10 million in commissions to home buyers nationwide. Since the launch of the home-buying service in February 2006, we have helped more than 1,000 people buy a home, with an average refund of $10,106. Since September 2006, we also worked with nearly 300 home sellers saving them more than $3 million in commissions, for an average savings of more than $12,142.

Did we make the right choice? We sure think so. But we couldn’t have done it without you, our customers and best critics. So, thank you for your support and feedback.

The $10-million-refund milestone caps a busy year for Redfin. We expanded from San Francisco and Seattle to Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Washington, D.C. Redfin also was the first brokerage to offer online forums for consumers to communicate with one another about the home-buying and -selling process and about the quality of their service from Redfin.

We also launched three major initiatives:

• The Redfin Advantage: a one-year study showing that Redfin clients not only get a commission refund but also a negotiating advantage in excess of $4,000 over clients of traditional brokerages;
• The Real Estate Scientist: data-driven guidance for home buyers and sellers to get better results, based on Redfin and academic studies; and
• The Real Estate Consumer Bill of Rights: a set of reforms for ensuring that consumers are well-informed, supported by more than 25 real estate businesses.

Keep your eyes on Redfin in 2008. We have a lot of exciting things in the works.

Bonus link: The programmer dress code. Redfin’s dev team already is top-notch, but should we mandate beards, long hair and dressing like a slob? It seems to work for all these guys.

December 13, 2007

Redfin on the Today Show … tomorrow!

We’re going to be on the Today Show Friday morning!

Are we joining Al Roker for the weather (and housing) forecast? We’ve been sworn to secrecy, but tune in Friday morning around 7:40 a.m. (same time in each time zone) to find out.  

And it’s LIVE, so you know what that means … anything can happen. Unless, of course, they have a tape delay for those Janet Jackson moments.

Check back tomorrow morning to get the scoop and maybe even a first-hand recount of what goes on behind the scenes.

In case you don’t know where to watch the Today show in your city, find out here.

April 30, 2007

Five Dumbest Renovation Fads: Are You Guilty?

Just in time for home-improvement season, Money Magazine came up with a list of the five dumbest renovation fads. Anything that compares Paula Abdul to a “dim” home feature deserves a read. “The result [of no fixed lighting] was that as night fell, rooms became as dim as Paula Abdul at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting.” In case you missed it, Paula proves her “Straight Up” dimness during her last Seattle visit.

Adhere to the list unless you want your family and friends to compare your cooking arena to the Iron Chef’s Kitchen Stadium or your garage to a small Costco. Don’t get me wrong, I love the 30-minute battle to concoct a five-course meal with ingredients like lobster or liver (including dessert!) and I love Costco, but I wouldn’t want my home to resemble a big box … unless that means there will be food samples in every room.

Cliffs Notes of the renovation dos and don’ts:

1. The great room craze: How do you light such a space without it looking like a lobby in a Marriott?
2. The kitchen stadium: It’s crazy to think that a kitchen longer than 20 feet is easy to use - you’d need Rollerblades to get from one end to the other.
3. The garage that ate your home: The things that give your house character don’t work on something the size of a small Costco.
4. Porches in the wrong place: … can make the rooms inside feel like caves.
5. Built-in lighting: … the end result of such an installation is a pockmarked ceiling that looks like a meeting room at a convention center.

Are you guilty? We’d love to hear about your home-improvement flubs.

Here’s one our Seattle Sweet Digs blogger Marilyn found that failed the Titleist test.

Happy renovating!

March 12, 2007

Is Your Neighborhood Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?

Moving to a new neighborhood and want to know how it compares to your current digs? Now you can! Today Redfin added community and school information links on every listing detail page, you even can do head-to-head comparisons. Currently available for Washington and California listings, we’ll add new markets as we expand so you’ll be able to check out those areas too.

Scroll down a bit and look for the above box on the left-hand side of the listing detail page, usually below the “Sales History” box. Note: clicking on the links will open another window, leaving your Redfin search intact on the original page.

I checked out my own Zip Code (98109 in the Queen Anne area of Seattle) and immediately homed in on education level and school test scores. I think I secretly wanted to know if my neighbors could hold their own on the new hot game show where “smart, educated” adults pit themselves against a handful of Golden State fifth-graders. I learned some fascinating conversation topics for my next cocktail party or playground chat with a neighborhood fifth-grader … I’ll crush them with my local knowledge.

A few things I learned about my area (which you can discover about your current or prospective one too!):

1. The median age is 36.28, not 9 (the average age of a fifth-grader).
2. Summer break comes at just the right time. July’s average high is 74 degrees!
3. The bachelor-of-arts crowd dominates at 31.2 percent, beating the fifth-graders at only 1.4 percent.
   
4. We’re under average for murders, but we must have easy-to-steal cars because the motor vehicle theft rate is more than 300 times the national average.
   
5. Earthquakes are the biggest weather risk - eek! A reminder for Seattleites to go to the mailbox and vote … tunnel, viaduct, both or neither?! sigh
   
6. Another cool thing you can do is compare cost of living, down to how much more or less your clothes will cost.
   
7. Out of 15,395 people, there are only 63 fifth-graders. Majority rules!

Warning: the comparison feature is addictive! I looked at a couple different cities I’ve lived in:

1. If I wanted to move back to Redondo Beach, Calif., I’d need to get an 11 percent raise to maintain my “Bud Light” lifestyle.
2. I could go back to Pullman, Wash. and get by with 37 percent less money (a round of drinks at the Coug on me!).

We also added open house information, when available. In the next couple months, they’ll be easier to find, but right now you will see the information under the house photo on the listing detail page.

Look for the above box under the listing’s main photo

An added bonus for you trivia hounds out there (real questions from Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? - no cheating!):

1. Which U.S. border is longer - Canada or Mexico?
2. Name the ship the pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England to the Plymouth colony in America in 1620.
3. How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?
4. How many U.S. states border the Pacific Ocean?
5. If you mix equal amounts of red and yellow paint, what color do you get?

Stumped? Comment or shoot me an e-mail and I’ll give you a hint - cynthia.pang(at)redfin.com.

January 22, 2007

It’s all about location, location … locution?

There have been a couple articles circling lately about the value of words in real estate listings. Quick, which of the following words will help sell your home?

• motivated seller
• good value
• clean
• quiet
• new paint

If you guessed all of the above, keep reading. Bottom line: words matter and none of these will help your home sell faster or for more money. Real-estate listings, not unlike personal ads, are crafted to minimize blemishes and maximize perceived selling points.

Deciphering home marketing-speak shouldn’t be complicated, but sometimes we need a decoder ring to help us read between the lines.

Articles in the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post give us a few …

Dos and don’ts:

• Don’t use an overabundance of exclamation points (note buyers: they can show a sign of desperation and an openness to a lower offer).
• Do use descriptive words about price and location. Last year’s top words were: “flow,” “embassy-style,” “enormous” and “lazy.” Supposedly these words connote a lifestyle of to-the-manner-born comfort, mint juleps on porches and drawing-room cocktails.
• Don’t make a plea of “must see!” This is received about as enthusiastically as a dinner-time telemarketing call.
• If you can’t find anything better to say than “new paint,” perhaps it’s best to say nothing at all.
• Sellers would be best served by a listing with “just the facts, ma’am.”

Statistics:

• Homes where the seller was “motivated” took 15 percent longer to sell
• Houses listed as “handyman specials” flew off the market in half the average time.
• Words that denoted “curb appeal” or general attractiveness helped a property sell faster than those that spoke of “value” and “price.”
• Homes described as “beautiful” moved 15 percent faster and for 5 percent more in price than the benchmark.
• “Good-value” homes sold for 5 percent less than average.

and unusual descriptions … that worked!:

• “FAMISHED FOR A FABULOUS FLATFRONT ON A FAMOUS BLOCK? Come feast your eyes on this femme fatale! Even the finicky will find her fetching while fledgling families and canine fanciers will contrive to fraternize.”
• … “pixie perfect, proudly self-possessed and peerlessly positioned for easy access to senate, judiciary.” [HUH?]

Economist Chad Syverson, co-author of a working paper that was the basis for a chapter in Freakonomics, sums it up the best … “the way an ad is written won’t change a dumpy-looking house.”

Our San Francisco blog has a few examples of real listings we put through the decoder ring.

Decoder ring picture credit: Heather McKinnon, The Seattle Times

December 19, 2006

REDFIN and the “Wings of Change” by ARDELL DellaLoggia

Welcome to the first Real Estate Industry Yankee Blog Swap! Today 34 of the most influential real estate bloggers are trading blogs for the day to offer a full spectrum of information on everything from current market conditions to the future of online real estate services. The full blog swap list is at the end of this post, be sure to join in the fun!

Visiting Redfin’s blog today is the one and only queen of Seattle real estate bloggers … Ardell DellaLoggia!

REDFIN and the “Wings of Change” by ARDELL DellaLoggia

For over 16 years, I have worked in an industry that is OVERLY “Sensitive (regarding) their dependency on initial conditions”.

“initial conditions” being, SAME OLD, SAME OLD–STATUS QUO

For those who are already “with me”:
Attractor D in the graph represents the Realtor organization.

Attractor C is REDFIN, getting dangerously close to piercing through the “Old Guard’s” falling curve.

Attractor A is Zip Realty.

And last, and most least, is Attractor B…the “bottom feeder” sites, “whose name is Legion and of which there are many.”

The “equilibria” point for the Realtor Organization represents the day the organization acknowledged the buyer’s right to separate and equal representation. Until that time, all agents represented the Seller, ALL agents wrote offers FOR buyers (as customers and not clients) with the hidden agenda of doing so, from the standpoint of the best interests of the seller. Odd but true, and apparently still true in some remote, far away places like…New York City!?!? that still has no MLS System. No MLS System, doesn’t mean we are “backward” and have no computers. No MLS System is a means of “controlling the inventory”. Even the many and most who have MLS Systems, are arching back toward the “blue square initial state” where “He who listed…lasted” and buyers should be grateful for the opportunity of…any crumbs the powers that be chose to leave for them on the table.

In all fairness, REDFIN was 2nd, and Attractor A/Zip Realty, was the first to make strides in “Empowering the ‘Buyer Consumer’,” with its offer of 20% to the buyer. I’ll let the curve in the graph speak for itself with regard to Zip as Zip did not do, in all its time to date, a smidgeon of what REDFIN has been able to do in its short history.

REDFIN carries us forward on its “Wings of Change”, just as a “butterfly’s wings create tiny changes in the atmosphere, that ultimately cause a tornado to appear”.

It is Glenn Kelman, and “Glenn Kelman’s REDFIN”, that means most to me. You only have to meet Glenn once to know that it is in the purity of his vision for the consumer, be that a buyer consumer or a seller consumer, that the “Truth Does OUT”. The Truth that the RULES were in fact made to be broken. Funny thing is, Glenn really doesn’t know that he is breaking the rules, nor do the blog staff writers. Glenn is approaching the industry without the burden of the industry’s pull toward it’s “initial state”. Glenn hasn’t a clue what the “initial state” was. He looks at the here and now. He looks at what people want and need and how technology can get them what they want and need, without regard to the forces that pull back toward “the initial state”.

Whether or not REDFIN succeeds as a business is ultimately irrelevant. Their tiny wings of change will bring forth the tornado that moves Attractor D back up on its course, toward a balance of power between the buyer and seller consumer. A marketplace that recognizes the buyer’s right to equal and separate representation…EVEN IF THE BUYER SAW THE HOUSE FIRST, WITH THE SELLER’S AGENT. NEVER, EVER CAN OR SHOULD A BUYER BE FORCED INTO BEING REPRESENTED BY THE SAME PERSON WHO REPRESENTS THE SELLER…NEVER AGAIN. If they WANT to do that, to KEEP all or a portion of the Buyer Agent fee, that’s OK. But some RULE that says they HAVE to?? Glenn is blind to that rule, he doesn’t remotely “get it”, nor should anyone “get it”…cause IT has to CHANGE along with lots of other “ITS”. “ITS” BROKE - FIX IT! You don’t like the way Glenn is “fixing it”…oh well, you had plenty of time to fix it on your own, and you DIDN’T!

So Glenn and the DOL and the tornado behind them, will fix it for the consumer, who needs for “IT” to be fixed.

Be sure to vist all the Yankee Blog Swappers:

Transparent Real Estate’s Pat Kitano vs. Zillow Blog’s Drew Meyers

RSS Pieces’ Mary McKnight vs. Future of Real Estate Marketing’s Joel Burslem

St. Paul Real Estate Blog’s Teresa Boardman vs. Phoenix Real Estate Guy’s Jay Thompson

3 Ocean Real Estate’s Kevin Boer vs. SLC Real Estate’s Nigel Swaby

Issaquah Undressed’s Larry Cragun vs. Maury Properties’ Andrew Maury

Chicago Home Weblog’s Geno Petro vs. NY Houses 4 Sales’ Christine Forgione

Phoenix Arizona Real Estate Blog’s Jonathan Dalton vs. Real Estate Snippets’ Bonnie Erickson

The boys of Sellsius vs. Real Estate Tomato’s Jim Cronin

ML Podcast’s Michael Price vs. FamousAgents.com’s Elise Wright

My Tech Opinion’s Reggie Nicolay vs. Ubertor’s Steve Jagger

Redfin’s Glenn Kelman vs. Rain City Guide’s Ardell DellaLoggia

CondoDomain’s Anthony Longo vs. miOaklandCounty’s Maureen Francis

The San Diego Home Blog’s Kris Berg vs. Urban Dig’s Noah Rosenblatt

The Property Monger’s Jon Ernest vs. XBroker’s Jeff Corbett

Realty Blogging’s Richard Nacht vs. The Mortgage Reports’ Dan Green

Christian Real Estate Network’s Justin Smith vs. Wanna Network’s Tony Senna

Sacramento Voice’s Gena Riede vs. Max Sell’s Brad Nix

For an overview of the event and all its participants, please visit www.YankeeBlogSwap.com.

December 1, 2006

Seasons Givings

I’ve read a lot of articles this week about people giving back: from funding technology to find a cure for ALS, educating people about AIDS/HIV with today’s World AIDS Day , how to join the ranks of WarrBill (my “clever” Brangelina mash-up for Buffett and Gates).

There even was a story in The Wall Street Journal today about hitting up party guests for donations to your favorite charity. People say they are “fed up with the excesses of the season and would rather wind up with money for a good cause than 20 bottles of wine at the end of the night.”

Since about 80 percent of charity donations come during the end-of-year holiday season, I wanted to point out a new option for Redfin homebuyers. Now you can have as little or as much of your refund sent to the charity of your choice. We’ll even drop the check in the mail for you.

It’s easy to do, just make sure you select “Apply all or part of the refund to the charity of my choice” when making an offer and a Redfin agent will help you with the rest.

Instead of using the old adage, “I gave at the office,” just tell ‘em you gave part of your home.

Happy Holidays!