In February (has three months already gone by?) we launched our partner agent program giving home buyers and sellers the opportunity to see and make offers on homes in areas where Redfin agents don’t serve. Home buyers use our site to search for homes and connect with an agent from another brokerage who shares our enthusiasm for great service, transparency and no sales pressure.
When we launched the program, in the dead of a grey Seattle winter, we expected a slow ramp up into the spring buying season. However, we were surprised to see the program take off from the start; likely due to the combination of low interest rates, a first-time home buyer tax credit, and a slow down in price declines in areas like the Inland Empire.
Let’s take a look at how the last three months have gone.
Home Buyers Are Looking For Agents
The busiest partner region, by far, is the Inland Empire where over 900 home buyers have requested to work with a Redfin partner agent on homes selling for, on average, $360,000.
Wanting to See a Home is the First Point of Contact
Most homes buyers on our site connect with our partner agents by requesting to see a home:
50% of buyers got in touch with an agent when they wanted to tour a home
40% of buyers wanted to meet the agent first likely to better understand the home buying process
10% of buyers contacted an agent ready to make an offer on a home they’d already found
We Let Our Agents’ Local Expertise Shine
Soon after launching the partner program, we made some changes in response to home buyer and agent feedback:
Reduced our partner’s coverage areas: we split some big, unwieldy service areas into more targeted areas. For example South Riverside County became Moreno Valley & Perris, San Jacinto & Hemet, and South Riverside County (mostly Temecula and Murrieta). Our partners and their clients are happier when the agent is covering a more focused area.
Show recommended agents: with our last release, we show the agent we recommend you work with on every listing details page. We pick the agent based off of how many deals they’ve done in the area. We’re working on loading every deal our partners do, whether it’s with a Redfin client or not, to make our agents’ profiles even richer and improve our recommendations.
Home Buyers are Happy With Our Partners
We survey everyone who works with one of our partner agents, whether they close on a home with a partner agent or not and publish all the results - the good and the bad, so that you can make an informed choice about an agent. Most of the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Check out what a first-time home buyer in Port Orchard, WA had to say about their experience buying a home with Beth:
As first time buyers, we had no idea what all the procedures were in buying a home. Beth made sure that we knew everything going on in the background process which was extremely helpful. She was always available by phone or responded quickly to emails and SMS. I would recommend Beth to any fist time home buyer.
Our Partners Are Happy With Our Clients
Our top partner agent in Northern California, David in Santa Cruz, says that our home buyers are, “knowledgeable, sophisticated and an absolute pleasure to work with.”
In three months a few of our partner agents have done quite well, connecting with 10 home buyers a month in the Inland Empire, San Francisco and Chicago.
Here are the top three agents based on gross commissions:
We have stringent requirements for our partner agents to ensure that they are of the same caliber as Redfin agents; we ensure the agent has done at least 15 deals, we check at least three customer references, we interview them in person and we survey all their clients. Read J Philip’s first hand experience joining us as a partner agent.
These requirements and a busy spring home buying season has made recruiting tough. So even though we now have over 60 partner agents we need more!
We’ve tried recruiting via craigslist (which unfortunately doesn’t allow advertising of referral programs and blocks our job postings in some markets), Google ads and scouring Google in targeted areas for the top agents. We’ve partnered with some great agents, but we still haven’t hit on the best way to reach out to progressive agents who put clients first. If you know any agents who shared Redfin’s passion for the customer, transparency and no sales pressure here’s our pitch to them. Or if you have ideas on how to reach them let us know.
Up Next: Online Tools & More Cities
Over the next few months we’ll be working on tools that allow our agents as well as partner agents to work together with customers online. We’ll also be looking at bringing Redfin to a few new cities.
Thanks to our charter partners, the home buyers who have reached out to them and everyone at Redfin who helped bring the partner program to life!
“Stronger than any referral I’ve ever received, from an ad or anything else” is what Redfin partner agent Nancy (who has over 20 years of experience!) excitedly called to tell our Seattle broker Kevin today about the tour requests she received so far.
After a Wednesday launch we’re already off to a roaring start with 38 customers choosing to work with one of 35 new Redfin partner agents; exceeding our expectations. Like Nancy, a number of partner agents have received multiple requests to either meet or see homes. At this rate we’ll soon be adding more partner agents to the program to handle demand. Fortunately 45 agents have applied to join the program! But we don’t add everyone who applies; we need to interview them and survey their customers from the last year to ensure they live up to our expectation of fanatical customer service.
Digging into the 35 requests we see that they’re spread across a lot of different agents and regions. Wanting to go see a home in person is what prompts many to pick an agent. We’ve also found that agents are very quick to respond to requests, often in just a few minutes. Mona is one of our fastest responders letting us know:
I called him 4 minutes after he sent the request [to see a house]… he said “OMG, that was quick!”
In related news, Redfin agent Angela Creech, was the first to have a review automatically published to her profile page with our brand spanking new survey system. It’s a bummer the buyer declined to leave a comment but they did give Angela 4.5 stars for handling their offer.
Look for an update next week on the brokerage business focusing on how we’re taking lots of clients out to see houses. Have a great long weekend!
But why write about the site when we can show you? Check out this seven minute video where we walk through the changes:
Scheduling Tours is Easier
Picking which homes you want to see in person with a Redfin field agent is still as easy as clicking the Go See It Button. What we improved with this release is that registration and sign-in is lighter weight and more importantly we have consolidated the two different home tour pages into one page which shows both the homes you want to see, your next scheduled tour and all the tours you’ve gone on. You can also add and remove homes from the list of homes you want to see even if you’ve sent your list to Redfin. Learn more about seeing homes with Redfin.
See Sale to List Ratio For Any Region
Everyone says homes are selling for less than asking, but nobody ever says by how much. Now we do! You can see the average sale to list for homes sold in the last 90 days on almost all our neighborhood pages. We also show those stats in the details page of every home along with other neighborhood stats. Here’s what it looks like on a home details page:
Note that for some regions we don’t show it because we don’t have enough sale to list data pairs in the last 90 days.
What Would You Like To See Next?
With this release of the website out the door we’re now arguing about what we should do next. Any suggestions?
Wow, what a week last week in New York. From the Real Estate Bar Camp on Tuesday to two and half full days of Inman Connect + parties it was an exhausting trip.
Now that I’ve recovered and survived three full days of meetings here at Redfin here’s my quick take on things:
The economy may get worse. There were lots of speakers talking about the economy and the current state of the real estate market. From Andrew Ross Sorkin (New York Times) to Robert Shiller (professor of economics at Yale) the overwhelming opinion was that we haven’t seen the worst yet. What has me puzzled is that I came back to work to find we’re hitting new highs in website traffic and every week are setting new records for home tour requests.
Redfin is leading the way. In his welcome address Brad Inman had a Top 10 List “A Roadmap to Recovery” with several points where we’re trying to lead the way and many others we want the industry to get behind:
We’re overhauling commission: our agents our paid on customer satisfaction not commission (#1)
We’re trying to be more efficient: we refund 50% of our commission back to the customer (#3)
We’re providing better “micro data”: from our neighborhood pages to our blogs we’re trying to give our users more data for the areas they want to live in. (#6)
Growing disconnect between brokerages and their agents. The big brokerages are cutting costs while their agents need more help than ever. I talked to one agent who worked for what I thought was a very progressive brokerage but she says they don’t understand social media at all. I talked to a few other agents who went so far as to leave their big brokerages to start their own. It sounds like agents need a website where they can easily compare, contrast and rate brokerages so they can easily figure out who gets it and who doesn’t.
Agents love Twitter. Watching what everyone was Twittering on #icny changed the conference for me. It made it easy to connect with new people, track down where the parties were and find out what people thought of the speakers in real time.
Lots of great people. I met TONS of great people still very enthusiastic about real estate: Stacey (OC agent), Jeff (XBroker), the guys from Dwellicious, House Chick, Kirsten (Seattle agent), Rob (Onboard), Andy (East Bay agent), Walkscore guys, Ginger (Marin agent), Heather (Virginia agent), Mike (Altos Research), Jay (Phoenix agent), Wellcomemat guys and on and on.
Agents can party hard. I was blown away how crazy hard everyone partied three nights in a row but would still be at the conference looking good at 9 AM no matter how much they drank.
BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.
What’d we talk about?
Marketing With Stats
The guys from Altos Research led a discussion about marketing using real estate stats (inventory, days on market, etc.).
This is nothing new for Redfin. This past summer we added neighborhood pages with MLS powered graphs and tables that are updated nightly. Our Sweet Digs blogs cover the Case-Shiller updates and publish posts based on local MLS data for each market we serve. We still have a lot to learn about what customers want from marketing stats. For instance, Altos charts trends based on price quartiles so you can see how the low priced segment of the market differs from the top. Should we do that too?
During the discussion, Blog by the Bay (Altos data) and House Chick (MLS data) were mentioned as good examples of blogs using stats.
Always Be Testing
Kelley from House Chick talked about using Google Web Optimizer (GWO) (see screenshots of how she uses GWO) over the past few months. I liked her statement that, “people who visit your site are voluntary participants with a task in mind. It’s up to you to keep them or lose them.” Several people in the crowd asked about using GWO to test content and themes for their blogs. I think it’d be a better use of their time to use GWO to maximize the calls to actions (newsletter sign-ups or contact form submissions) on their own sites.
Lifestyle Search
Onboard has something brewing they’re calling “Lifestyle Search.” Onboard’s CTO, Liam and marketing VP, Rob led a discussion about the evolution of real estate search. Liam thinks that great search is when a real estate user asks the wrong question, then gets a great answer in return. According to Liam, a great website can figure out what a user really meant to ask. We compared the current state of real estate search to being something akin to Match.com: you need to know what you’re looking for (price, beds, etc). To make real estate search more like eHarmony, a home search would take into consideration your age, whether you had kids, what kind of life style you wanted. I can’t wait to get a demo of what they’re announcing at Inman tomorrow.
Future of Buyers Agency/Brokerage
I hadn’t met Michael Daly until minutes before we led a discussion about the future of buyers agency/brokerage. Unfortunately Tony who introduced us over email wasn’t able to make it. The group started small but grew during the hour. We talked about agent compensation (salaried vs. commission-based), leading a good broker movement, forming a consumer advocacy group, the government’s role in regulation, should single agent-dual agency be prohibited and much more. Unfortunately, we produced no clear answers, but there was definitely a number of agents and brokers passionate about being customer advocates throughout the buying process.
Educating Agents
I missed the beginning of the educating agents talk led by Rob, but when I joined it started to morph into a discussion of how to improve agent’s image, the role of the brokerage, and the seven year buying cycle.
It’s my impression that the way real estate brokerages are structured is changing. Why? It sounds like big brokerage brands are focused on getting warm bodies in seats to pay seat fees while cutting costs. Agents on the ground feel like they’re not getting any value from these brokerages. The smartones are striking out on their own, keeping more of the commission for themselves. These agents have more control of their brand and offer better service to their clients.
At Redfin, I think we’re ahead of the curve of building a better brokerage brand with careful hiring, delivering consistent customer service, publishing agent profiles (complete with transaction and customer review data), and compensating our agents based on customer satisfaction instead of commissions.
In New York?
You can find me on Twitter or txt me at 206-618-1600.
While Lisa is new to Twitter it’s exciting to see sellers using different online mechanisms to promote their listings. I definitely think that Twitter, especially if you have a decent number of followers, can be a great way to generate traffic to your listing.
It’s been a busy few months and an all hands on deck effort as we changed not just our service (Read Glenn’s blog post on the service changes) but updated the website to match. Every page was touched, all the content was re-written, and no pixel was left un-turned (except the blog layouts which will be updated later this week ).
Here’s a walk through of everything that’s new.
New Homepage, Header and Design
Returning visitors go straight to the map so you may not have noticed our new home page.
To help folks navigate the site we released a new header with drop down menus making it easy to find an agent or more information on buying or selling. We’ve also tweaked our design in a number of spots to make it easier to read, more user friendly and ensure that you can quickly engage an agent when you have questions.
Learn About Our Agents
We’ve had agent profiles showing their recent transactions and customer ratings for a while now but with our release today they’re much more accessible and now feature an agent’s posts in our forums and their active listings. Take a look at Gina’s profile to see what we mean. With today’s changes you can now meet agents at agent office hours or our home buying class.
In addition every details page has a “Work With A Redfin Agent” button that takes you to an agent chooser to help you get started:
15% More Inventory
We now have all the MLS listed homes for sale in every market we’re in:
Multi-family: Duplexes, triplexes and whole apartment buildings. If you want to buy a two to four unit building, Redfin can help.
We also upgraded the Seattle and Ventura County homes for sale feeds.
More Search Options
You asked, we listened.
Separate Out Townhouses: Our most frequent feature request in Seattle is to enable people to get rid of townhouses from their searches. Now you can!
Parking and Garages: In San Francisco and other densely populated places folks really want to find places with parking. In suburban places they want to find garages. Now you can do both.
Waterfront: When only the best or most expensive will do, this will help you find it.
On our neighborhood pages we also added a “Most Popular” tabs so you can see what’s hot. Here’s what’s popular in Boston.
Features for a Distressed Market
Price reduced: Quickly find listings that have been recently reduced to jump on a new deal or ones that haven’t had one in a while in the hopes you get to them before they reduce again.
Short sales: Exclude them from your search since they’re so hard to buy.
Property history: Now see a home’s complete history.
CDOM: In Seattle and Boston we now show the cumulative days on market direct from the MLS.
Take Notes
Every listing details or past sale page now has a notes box. You can now keep track of your first impressions and notes from seeing an open house or going on a tour. See all your notes on one page.
Offer and Listing Wizards
We’ve also improved our offer and listing wizards making it easier than ever to get started with Redfin.
We Hope You Like It
Thanks for all your feedback leading up to this release; we ran over two dozen focus groups and usability studies! They were at times painful to watch.
And a big thanks to our rockstar dev team and everyone else and Redfin. We hope the site is better than ever and that this release will be the one that takes Redfin mainstream.
If you have any suggestions or find any bugs let us know in the comments! In the meantime we’ll keep working on the next release of Redfin.
It also looks like Street View may have been worth the wait as this imagery appears to be higher quality than other cities and features four zoom levels. Perfect for checking out what your new neighborhood looks like.
In our last release we added a “Share on Facebook” link to our details pages that when hovered over brings up a menu from AddThis letting you bookmark the home to your favorite social bookmarking service.
Before launching the feature we debated what the top service would be. Glenn, voted for Delicious, I voted for Facebook. In fact I thought Facebook would win by a long shot which is why we used the text “Share on Facebook” instead of something more generic like “Share on…”
Curious who won the bet we used the AddThis analytics feature to settle up. Here’s a breakdown of how many times the various services have been used:
Of course, maybe the fact that the link specifically calls out Facebook is the reason it is the leading bookmarking service :).
Here’s a breakdown by day.
In our next release we’ll add a Facebook icon in front of the link to increase its discoverability.
Big thanks to Dan, for pushing us to use AddThis.com, instead of adding only a Share on Facebook link.
When we re-designed our website in April one of the changes we made was hiding the search options. The reasoning behind this controversial design was that since users spend most of their time navigating the map and only occasionally change the number of beds or square footage that they’re looking for, we should make the map as large as possible and move the search options to an overlay. The overlay then only appears when you give focus to the search input box or click a widget.
Initially to display the search overlay pictured above users would need to click the link ‘Filter Search’:
However, we heard occasional stories of users not knowing they could search on number of beds or price. So our next design was to include a drop down widget besides the search button. This is reminiscent of what many Windows applications do or what Facebook does.
But still we heard stories of users not knowing they could change their search options. With our next release we’re looking at combining both the link and drop down widget approachs by moving the drop down widget and changing the name on the link to hint at what it enables you to change:
Unfortunately a number of co-workers stormed into my office yesterday, criticized the design and called me names. If I were to pass you the Redfin Search Product Manager baton how would you solve this discoverability problem? Feedback welcome but Photoshop submissions preferred :). To sweeten the pot we’re offering $250 if we use your submission. However, if you have a winning submission the real question is, why haven’t you applied for our interaction designer position yet?
And with that I’m off to Whistler. Happy Thanksgiving!
Redfin's corporate blog is the place to read what Redfin employees have to say about Redfin, the real estate industry and other topics such as life at a startup or usability and web design.
