As for the earlier comments on rentals, the two most egregiously overpriced rentals have partly come to their senses.

910 Contra Costa now asking $4400 a month down from $5500 two weeks ago.

1050 Oxford went from $5000 a month to $4300.

People with high carrying costs (recent buyers) seem to think they are going to be able to pass those on to renters, that is not going to happen. I am seeing it not happen every day. Even those I mention above will eventually rent for less than that.

There is a reality in behavioral studies that shows people don’t like to sell below what they think the market bears, even if it is the smartest thing for them to do at the time. Some people just take longer figuring out what the market will bear.

With regards to Redfin feature plans, we’ll be adding a feature that show’s a home’s listing history since it’s past sale in our next release. Look for it around October.

Matt

Lead Product Manager – Search

And, actually, the MLS does track the sales price of a home after it has closed.

to the point from Frolic: “I don’t think it’s Redfin’s job to track this kind of thing.” Redfin’s ‘job’ like all realtors is to handle transactions. They’ve chosen to do that by driving internet traffic. Having accurate information about true price changes (as opposed to just what MLS shows) would be attractive (as shown by this discussion), so it seems like it’s in Redfin’s interest to track this.

To Billy’s point: “Redfin just aggregates data from the MLS” I think Redfin does more than that. If you look at a sold property (one no longer on MLS) it shows sales history, which I don’t think is on MLS, so Redfin is doing more. And technically it seems very possible for Redfin to track and show the multiple MLS listings for a given property.

That said – maybe MLS would prevent Redfin from doing this.

I think Berkeley has an active rental market because there are more renter types that want to be there (visiting professors and grad students), so I would say that there has always been a pretty healthy rental market with good price support. But when you start to ask 5k or up for a SFH, you better have a family that makes about 200k per year or have multiple renters each paying a portion of the rent. In any case, we will see how long they keep sitting there.

It doesn’t help for 1050 Oxford that there is another nice rental just across the street asking 4k, down from $4200, and yet to rent after 3 weeks up.

As for re-listing places, it is the MLS that should be doing something about it, Redfin just aggregates data from the MLS. The MLS has rules against pulling and then re-listing to show 0 DOM, but nobody does anything about it, its commonplace.

Just re-listed yesterday..Is it a short sale or an REO?

Industries generally need to police themselves. In this case, a handful of bad-acting real estate agents give the entire field a reputation as liars and swindlers.