What Neighborhood is Right For You? Ask Redfin!

In life and websites, it’s the small things that count. Redfin’s latest update included a few of the small things that can really make a difference in how people use the site to search for a home to buy or to take the first step toward selling the one they have.

Buyers: We’ll suggest other neighborhoods you might like

When you’re looking for a home, you get a pretty good idea of what neighborhood is the right fit for you. When a lot of buyers save their home searches in two or three specific neighborhoods, we know there are some similarities there that other Redfin users should know about. So we use our data to show you which neighborhoods people with similar search criteria are checking out. For example, people who saved searches in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington DC also saved searches in U Street Center, Petworth and Mount Pleasant. It’s important because it gives buyers the chance to consider some other areas they didn’t think about before, especially when a lack of homes for sale in one neighborhood causes them to look elsewhere.

Sellers: You can edit your home in the Home Price Tool

Redfin gets some of our home information from public records, which are good, but they’re not perfect. Now, if the number of bedrooms, bathrooms or square footage you see for your home in Redfin’s Home Price Tool isn’t accurate, you can fix it. Just click Adjust Details to update the facts and change the comparison properties, and you can save those changes in the estimate the Home Price Tool shows you. However, any changes you make will only be visible to you, and not to other people who use the tool. This was the number one request from people who used our Home Price Tool, and it helps us give you a more accurate price estimate for your home.

Home Buying on April 1 Just Became Unbelievably Easy

Redfin is testing a new website feature today only that makes home buying almost foolishly easy.

It’s called 2-Click Purchase, and it gives Redfin customers the option to become a home owner with just two mouse clicks. For one day only, our devil-may-care customers can make potentially the most important financial decision of their lives without the need to secure financing, see the home in person, write an offer, negotiate the deal and complete title and escrow.

Customers told us that in the current real estate market where what little there is to choose from often sells in three days or less, they need to hear about new listings first, and be able to act fast.  We released Instant Updates in March, to email customers immediately when a home is listed for sale that meets their search criteria. 2-Click Purchase takes it a big step further, and actually lets them buy that home immediately.

How 2-Click Purchase works
On every listing page, a customer can click the “Purchase with 2-Click” button that will put her on a path to buying the home with just one additional click.

After the customer chooses a shipping method, additional options and a payment method on the next screen, she’s sent a confirmation email (if she’s logged into her Redfin account) and her new home keys are processed for shipment.

2-Click Purchase isn’t for everyone. Most home buyers still want to tour a home with an agent who knows the market in that neighborhood, will meet them on their first tour, see the home before writing the offer, negotiate on their behalf and hand them the keys once they’ve closed. Redfin’s agents are still there to offer that personal service and guide them at every step.

What about my Redfin refund?

It’s donated to the Human Fund.

Is 2-Click Purchase real?
No. Redfin created 2-Click Purchase as an April Fools’ Day joke. We hope you got a laugh or two!

Dang. That’s Fast.

In a real estate world suddenly frenzied with competition, Redfin just released Instant Updates, the first* major service for immediately alerting home-buyers about new listings and price drops. Now, 15 – 30 minutes after a real estate agent lists a home for sale, folks using Redfin to search for listings in that area will get an email alert. Users of any other major real estate website have to wait until the next day.

What does a day matter? Well, 17% of the homes that debuted and sold since the beginning of this year went under contract within three days of their debut. Giving our customers an extra day to get into the home and decide about an offer is a crucial competitive advantage, particularly when we now see home-buyers going door to door to ask if anyone in the neighborhood might be willing to sell.

To get instant updates, just click Email me new listings in the results box that appears on the left whenever Redfin presents search results in a map:

If you’re already getting daily listing updates, you can switch over to Instant Updates by opening the menu under your name at the top right of every page on Redfin.com. From there, just choose My Alerts & Emails:

Then scroll about halfway down the page, and change all your alerts from Daily to Instant:

And then brace yourself. New listings will start coming fast and furious:

You can always unsubscribe once you find a home.

You can get Instant Updates on individual properties too. If you mark a home as a favorite, you’ll get an Instant Update when the price changes, when it first goes under contract, and when it finally sells or comes back on market. We’ll also alert you if a Redfin agent tours the home and then shares her first-hand observations. Folks who are already using Redfin to track their favorite homes from day to day can switch to Instant Updates by accessing the My Alerts & Emails page.

How did we get so fast? Redfin was able to develop Instant Updates because we’ve made a massive investment over the past five years in direct, high-frequency integration with the local Multiple Listing Services real estate agents use to list properties and record sales. While other websites get partial or indirect access to some MLSs, only companies with real estate agents get full, immediate access to all the broker-listed homes for sale. As part of our commitment to getting data faster than just about anyone else, we tell the world exactly how often we refresh our listings, for every market we serve.

And as the web shifts from periodically updated pages to a continuous stream of new listings, prices and photos, the near-real-time data access Redfin enjoys as a market-maker is becoming more important. We expect over the coming year to deliver Instant Alerts through iPhone and Android alerting systems, and Facebook and Twitter timelines. I’m sure more real-time services will emerge over the next few years.

But as Redfin becomes a more frequent guest in your online life, we have to make sure we mind our manners.  Already, 264 customers have spent the past month helping  us design and test Instant Updates. One was able to beat out other bidders on a hot property because she heard about it first through Redfin. But mostly, we’ve been the ones who benefited: our customers helped us change up the subject line so that each update didn’t get bunched under one email thread, and asked us to allow different searches to send email alerts on different schedules.

The one request we didn’t address: a link that opens the listing in our iPhone and iPad apps, rather than in a web browser. That’s coming later this month.

For now, what I’m excited about is how Instant Updates change the speed of the game. In a world where a Las Vegas chef can now buy a fish from the Adriatic before the fisherman has even returned to harbor, it’s crazy to think that real estate updates have appeared like a 1950′s newspaper, queuing information into a new edition that shows up once a morning rather than in real time. Over the next few years, we hope that Redfin and other technology-powered brokers can help to make the whole real estate market better-informed, and faster too.

*Update: Sawbuck offered real-time alerts before Redfin did, as Sawbuck CEO Guy Wolcott kindly pointed out in the comments. When we get excited about being the first to offer a feature, we’ll check the Sawbuck site out first, just as we do the other big sites out there.

Now Available on Redfin: Filter by HOA Dues!

Our website wizards at Redfin are always on the prowl for new features that can wow and amaze our customers. Even more so when it’s a feature you’ve told us you wanted, and that no other major real estate site has.

To that end, we launched a feature on our search menu today to let you filter out homes above a maximum monthly homeowner’s association dues amount – or even “No HOA.”  Might not seem like a big deal at first glance (and maybe it’s not if you have an extra $600/month handy), but anyone looking at condos or townhomes can tell you that HOA dues can be the difference between a great home you can afford and one that’s out of your price range.

You can find the Max HOA option under Home Facts on the search menu.  This can be used for any search, including your saved searches, and even used on the iPad or iPhone through a saved search.  And it’s another way you can refine the homes that are exactly what you’re looking for with our Listing Alert feature.

So thanks for the feedback, and keep it coming! We do turn your ideas into features!  And in the meantime, what do you think of the new filter?

Keep Tabs On Your Neighborhood

Wow, has it been a busy week!

Monday we released our long-awaited app, Redfin for iPad. Today you can sign up to get a monthly email that tells you what’s going on near your home with Redfin’s Home Report or in your neighborhood, zip or city with Redfin’s Insider Report. While serious home buyers are probably already signed up for our daily emails to stay on top of new and updated homes for sale, we figured the tire-kickers, the homeowners and those casually thinking of selling would prefer an email tailored to them, sent once a month.

The email is packed full of great info straight from the MLS, the database that all real estate agents use, as well as from our agents:

• Local market statistics: See at a glance what has happened with prices, sales, sale-to-list and new listings
• Recent sales: Photos and prices of what your neighbor’s home sold for
• Recent listing activity: The last three homes that hit the market
• Featured Redfin listing: Good news for Redfin sellers; we feature one seller a month!
• Redfin Agent Insights: Honest opinions from a Redfin Agent who toured a home near you
• Real estate porn: Photos of the most expensive, the cheapest and most popular homes nearby

This email is just the tip of the iceberg for us. Over the coming months expect to see more and more features for home owners and sellers as we build a suite of tools to rival those that we’ve built for serious home buyers.

Here’s what my Redfin Home Report email looks like:

How to Sign Up

To sign up, just search for your home on our site. Claim your house in the My Redfin box and we’ll sign you up for a Home Report:

Or if you want to get the report for a different house, look for the ad below on any off-market property:

To sign up to receive an email about a neighborhood, search for the neighborhood, click the Stats & Trends button on the left side of the map, then look for this box on the upper right hand side:

After you’ve signed up, you can manage the homes you’re monitoring with your Favorites page in My Redfin in the upper right hand corner.

And that’s it for new site features and apps this year! Although we’re always curious about what you would like to see us add for home sellers and home owners in the future. Any suggestions?

You Complete Us; Let Us Auto-Complete Your Search

Today’s Redfin upgrade brings with it a couple new features you’ve told us would make your search faster and easier.  Check them out:

Auto-complete for search locations: Ever had trouble remembering the peculiar spelling of a city or neighborhood? Now, as soon as you type the third character of the city or neighborhood name on the home page or in the search box, we’ll offer suggestions to help you fill the rest in. We’d hate for a mindless spelling error to interfere with your home search.

Listing details open in the same tab: We heard you wanted quicker, smoother transitions between the map page and the listing details page.  The listing details page now opens in the same tab as the map, so you can use the back and forward buttons to move quickly between those pages. For those of you who derive comfort from the sight of a screen full of tabs, you can still open the listing details page in a new tab by right-clicking View Details and then left clicking Open link in new tab or by Ctrl + clicking View Details.

As always, if there are any other changes you’d like us to make to help improve our site, email them to feedback@redfin.com.

Happy searching!

Scouting Report, the Morning After

When Redfin first launched our home-buying service, David Eraker sent an email to the whole company that I’ll never forget:

“Strap in Team Redfin. We’re in for a wild ride.”

No truer statement has ever been made about Redfin’s journey, which took another turn last week when we launched Redfin Scouting Report. We made big mistakes. And we heard from some data providers that we couldn’t access their data.

First, I want to apologize for our mistakes and explain what we’ve been doing about them.

Days on Market: Immediately Fixed (But That Was Really Bad)
Our most egregious mistake was miscalculating how long many agents took to sell their listings. It was a bug that crawled into the code right before we launched, and we corrected it on the same day. Many thanks to Holly Weatherwax in Northern Virginia for being the first to identify the error.

Wrong Brokerage for Some Phoenix Agents: Fixed Today!
For about 10% of Portland, Phoenix and Las Vegas agents, we showed the wrong brokerage, saying for example that the agent worked for Coldwell Banker when he or she worked for Century 21. We fixed Vegas and Portland on Friday, and Phoenix this afternoon.

Only Two Years of Past Sales in Denver and San Diego: Fixed Today!
In Denver, we claimed to show sales going back to January 1, 2008, but for the most part we only had data going back to October 1, 2008 and in Boulder we had less than that. So that our data are complete and reliable for the entire Denver area, we are only going to show one year of sales there. We had the same issue in San Diego and Long Island, but will be able to show sales going back two years, to October 3, 2009. These changes will be complete this afternoon. Thanks to Bob Connors for first noticing the problem.

Dual Agency and Self-Represented Buyers: Fixed Today!
We described some agents as having represented both buyers and sellers on one deal, a controversial practice known as dual agency, when in some cases the buyer was unrepresented by an agent. This is a problem in the source data we get from Multiple Listing Services, so we can only provide a more nuanced description of dual agency, which includes the possibility of unrepresented buyers. This description will be posted throughout the site this afternoon.

Dual Agency on Phoenix REOs: The MLS Can Help!
Our old, good friend Greg Swann in Phoenix has told us that many Phoenix listing agents don’t give the buyer’s agent credit on a deal, especially when the listing is a foreclosure being sold by a bank. This is a problem in the source data maintained by the Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) used by real estate agents to share listings and record deals, so we asked two MLSs today for their guidance on the issue. Both recommended that the buyer’s agent contact the MLS compliance department to get credit for representing the buyer in that sale. These MLSs have a process for this type of issue and will work with both agents to get it fixed.

Sales Withheld from our Feed: Fixed Today!
We have also found that some agents sell a property but don’t get credit for it in Scouting Report, because they withhold a record of the sale from our data feed, known in the industry as a Virtual Office Website (VOW) feed. Sometimes, the agent allowed the sale to be included in the feed, but it disappeared due to a bug in the feed. Without that record, we can’t locate the deal on our map, determine its price or show its pictures — but we can include it in the agent’s total deal count, with a note explaining the discrepancy. We’ll do that later today. We would also encourage agents to include every sale in the VOW feed; it’s good for you, and good for every agent’s customers to see all the sale records.

Teams Where a Team-Member Is Not Listed as a Co-Agent: Email Us
We also have had agents such as Carol Carnevale contact us because deals completed by a member of their teams, under a different license number, did not show up in the team leader’s profile. When two agents list one property as co-agents, the original Scouting Report handled this well, but when an agent doesn’t do it that way, we have no other way of knowing when two agents work together as a team.  We are handling this on a case-by-case basis; if you as an agent would like your deals combined with that of another agent, contact data-issue (at) redfin (dot) com.

Data Licensing Problems: Washington DC Area & the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area
We also have data-licensing problems. In Washington DC and the East Bay of San Francisco, our data partners have asked for a more careful review process. We are suspending access to the Scouting Report in these areas until we can complete that review. In neither case have we discussed a specific rules violation, so we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions yet about what this means or where it’ll end up.

Sayonara Sacramento
In Sacramento, we have come to our own conclusion that Scouting Report violates data-sharing rules. We’re contacting our data partner there to confirm this, but expect to remove Sacramento access to the Scouting Report later today.

Half the Data Isn’t Good Enough: We Should Never Have Launched Atlanta Scouting Report
In Atlanta, we have become more pessimistic about the possibility of getting complete data on every agent there, so we are disabling the Atlanta Scouting Report. We should have waited to publish the Scouting Report in Atlanta until we were ready to jump through all the hoops — from both providers, not just one.

Southern California, Denver and Portland: Registration Now Required
To comply with rules from our Southern California, Denver and Portland data providers, we are requiring consumers there to register before seeing Scouting Report.

Three Data Providers Affirm that Redfin Scouting Report is Within the Rules
And the good news is that in three major areas we have heard from our data providers that Scouting Report is within the rules, which bodes well for the many other areas that have similar data licensing contracts.

Here’s a summary of how everything has ended up, in every area that Redfin serves:

What’s Next?
Who knows! Surfacing millions of records that have never seen the light of day before is always a bit like opening Pandora’s Box. But it’s worth it in the end if you can get it right. That’s what we’re trying very, very hard to do, working late in the night and through the weekends. Again, we are sorry for all the ways we screwed up in presenting data from dozens of feeds, based on thousands of rules.

Though we will not shy away from our responsibility to be authoritative and reliable, we also think it’s a mistake to set ourselves up as the sole authority on an agent’s performance. We already encourage agents to contact us with corrections, but we will at some point add a more public way for an agent to comment on what we’ve published about him or her.

That said, we’re not interested in Scouting Report becoming a marketing vehicle for agents who work for other brokers; promoting a brokerage’s agents is, after all, that brokerage’s role. But we do think it’s important that the brokers, and not pay-for-play media sites, provide the most reliable record of what agents have done and where. It’s hard, but not impossible, and it’s worthwhile. Redfin is just the first broker to do this, not the last.

Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

Whoa nelly! Redfin just released Redfin Scouting Report, offering Redfin users and customers free performance statistics on more than one million real estate agents: how many homes each agent sold, where, for how much, how fast, with how many price drops, how recently, all on a map.

Now just by typing in a name you can get the facts on any agent, even one not affiliated with Redfin, in every market Redfin serves — except in Seattle, Palm Springs, the Bay Area’s wine country and parts of Atlanta, where our data providers are more careful about what we can show. Hopefully this will help you make a better choice about which agent to hire, and hopefully that choice is more often to hire a Redfin agent.

Here’s a report for a Boston-area Prudential agent, Trisha Solio, who kindly gave us permission to blog about her profile:

How does your agent stack up? Type in her name to find out!

Remember How It Feels to Do Something This Good?
It’s hard to account for why Scouting Report is so compulsive – the gerbils we tried it out on absolutely demolished their cages after we took it away.

And it’s harder still to account for how I  feel about it — the megalomaniac pleasure of a Redfin creation, the mangled pride at the work my friends and teammates have done, the old Kelman craziness. When I first saw Scouting Report, it brought me back many, many years, to the nicest thing I ever heard anyone say.

All my sulky teenage friends and I used to play basketball with a squat, middle-aged man from Mexico, who made us pick every little kid for our teams, even eight-year-olds, even when we already had too many. The instant a tyke heaved up a tentative, hopeless shot the squat man would scream, “GOOOOOOD SH*T MAN!” Running back on defense, he’d tap the chest of the wide-eyed little kid, saying in the most earnest, kind way — as if it were the final truth about the world — “THAT’S SOME REAL GOOD S**T!!!”

I must’ve heard it a thousand times, but then forgot it until I first saw Scouting Report. A spasm sliced through me in the office of Redfin engineer Shu Wu, through all the crusty layers of adulthood, of studying for the test and waiting for the light. And I found myself almost yelling: “GOOD SH** SHU! THAT’S SOME REAL GOOD SH**!!!!” The best reason to work at a smaller company is so you can have just a few moments that good.

OK But How Will Publishing Data About Other Agents Help Redfin?
And Scouting Report really is that good. No one else has ever done this on such a large scale. Now for the first time, consumers can see what agents see about other real estate agents.

In some cases, what you’ll see is that an agent at another brokerage is a better fit for that neighborhood, an inevitability that has been a source of great controversy within Redfin. Why would we ever help anyone realize that a Coldwell Banker agent is her best choice?

But once you ask that question, you’ve already framed the debate in terms of short-term consequences rather than long-term principles. It leads you down a path where every market analysis concludes that it’s a good time to buy, and every review of a Redfin agent is five-stars.

The world doesn’t need more brokers like that. It needs a broker who will just tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We’ll win more clients that way than we’ll lose — and we’ll win everyone’s trust.

How Will The Industry React?
We still aren’t sure how other brokers in the industry will react on seeing their agents’ deals laid out, as ours already were, on a map. I’m optimistic. We as brokers and agents are acutely aware of why you spend more money on a real estate agent than a car: because the value of your largest investment hangs in the balance.

We can’t insist that we’re worth it without taking seriously consumers’ need to evaluate our performance. And as brokers we can’t pretend that refusing to provide this information won’t just leave it for other websites, with pay-to-play business models, to create only a partial directory, with less reliable data.

Hopefully the Scouting Report helps people make better decisions about which agents to hire, just as Redfin’s listing search helps people make better decisions about which homes to buy. And hopefully that leads to more business for Redfin, which we earnestly believe employs the world’s best agents. If that also means it will help the best agents at other brokerages too, we can live with that. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

First Big Android Update

Woohoo! Only two months after its release, our first big update is available for download.

We got lots of feedback for improvements and new features, and we listened:

• Sort results: Just like on our website, you can now sort search results and favorites lists by price, address, beds, baths, city, days on market and much more – simply hit the “Sort” button in the context menu.
• Search radius: We now highlight the search radius right on the map, making it easier to tell where you’re searching.
• Map for each home: Every home is mapped right on its details page, so it’s easy to see where it is (we actually snuck this in last week.)
• Bugs & issues: We’ve fixed a bunch of bugs and addressed common issues to make it faster, more stable, and easier to use.

Keep the feedback and reviews coming. We’re listening.

Sort Results	Search Radius

Redfin’s iPhone App Keeps Getting Better

Less than a month after our last big iPhone release, we’ve got another one today! And this release isn’t just a few bug fixes; we’ve added a bunch more features.

Go get it now! It’s got all this great stuff:

• X-out homes: Just like you can on the website, you can x-out homes you don’t like and it all syncs with your Redfin.com account.
• Simpler navigation: We now take you straight to a home’s details from the map or list views.
• Map for each home: Every home is mapped right on its details page, so it’s easy to see where it is (we also added this to the Android app!)
• New list view: The list view has been cleaned up considerably, and does a much better job calling out important details and pending home sales.
• Delete off-market favorites: By popular demand, you can now delete your off-market favorites by swiping them and hitting “delete”.
• Faster and more stable: We’ve fixed a bunch of bugs and made things even faster.

We owe a big thanks to intern Seth Goldenberg for doing a bunch of the coding as well as a ton of other folks on our SF engineering team like Navtej, Andy, Dan, Ben, Jansen and Steven. It was truly a team effort getting it out the door.

If there’s anything else you’d like to see, please let us know in the comments below or by emailing us at feedback@redfin.com.

One last thing: we’re taking a little break from working on the iPhone app so that we can focus on releasing our all-new app for the iPad. We’ll keep you posted!