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Category: Redfin.com (page 5 of 8)

June 12, 2007

Redfin’s Sweet Digs weblogs resurrected as neighborhood sites

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From John Cook’s Venture Blog:

“Sweet Digs” is back — kind of.

The Redfin real estate blog, which was shut down last month after agents complained to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service that the home reviews were hurting sales, is making its return today in a modified state.

No longer will Redfin bloggers post in-depth reviews of open houses. Instead, the posts will detail information such as price reductions, past sales, open house listings and the number of homes for sale in certain neighborhoods. It also plans to do previews of new listings.

Sweet Digs also will be launched later this summer in Boston and Southern California, the company’s two newest markets.

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June 5, 2007

Katy Couric, Redfin, and the Predictability of Markets.

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

There was a delightfully obtuse article in yesterday’s Oregonian lamenting the abysmal ratings of Katy Couric and CBS Evening News. The writer’s reasoning was that it’s our fault for not watching, that we’re a country of misogynists not ready for a serious female anchor. Damn us.

The fact is that, like most markets, the ratings were entirely predictable. Not that prediction is easy — obviously some people can’t even predict in hindsight — but those who are best able to infer behavior from given cause are those most likely to succeed in whatever they do.

Some suggestions:

1. Trust your first impression.

It’s the first advice I give to buyers: You’ll know it when you see it; if you have to be talked into it it’s probably not right. Same with ideas: if it sounds nutty on first hearing, chances are it is.

When a network news division with serious credibility problems hires as an anchor someone famous for her teeth and entertainment value — and with credibility problems of her own — it’s nutty.

When a company — Redfin — launches on the supposition that buyers will rush to be represented by someone they’ll never meet in their most important purchase of their lives, it’s nutty.


2. The corollary to (1): Don’t project your own bias.

Manifested in the notion that “If I think it, so must everyone.”

The Oregonian is obsessed with global warming (full disclosure: I am not obsessed with global warming). When our local MLS decided to add a ‘green’ search mechanism, apparently intended to pick up those properties with Energy Star or other ratings, The Oregonian devoted sixty column inches to the news. (See here). I still haven’t ever had a buyer ask me to find a green property, a seller who’s asked how to get a ‘green’ rating, nor have I ever talked to anyone else who has, and I live in the greenest state in the US. As of right now, there are 304 green listings in the MLS; out of 12,741.

Redfin’s (and Sixty Minutes’) bias is “Stick it to the Man!” CBS’s bias is: gender trumps merit.

Caveat: It’s Read more

May 27, 2007

Tennessee, Oregon, and the State of Real Estate

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

This started as a reply to Greg’s post on the Tennessee legislature, which apparently insists going backward is the new going forward. But then I had The Conversation, and it’s developed into a post of its own.

Involved is someone I respect, a friend, a mentor, perhaps the one person more responsible for getting me into real estate than anyone. In the business over twenty years, he knows RE law better than most principal brokers, and has helped me enormously in the first three years I’ve been around.

Oregon is one of the eleven states that has a “Thou shalt not share commission!” law, passed at least fifteen years ago, notwithstanding Glenn Kelman’s Sixty Minutes inference that it was all about him. I wanted to know why it was passed in the first place: Assuming consumer protection against graft or corruption, I couldn’t figure out how that worked. The answer dumbfounded me:

“That protects us, our commissions. I’m glad it’s there.”

Oh, dear. Thank you for the candor. Elaborate?

“Look, I know you’re a free market kind of guy, but there’s nothing wrong with laws protecting us from consumers. People try to hack away at my commission every day on the listing side. This prevents the same kind of hacking on the buying side.”

Wait. Aren’t you worth the commission you charge? “Of course. That’s my point.” Then when someone asks you to cut your commission, what’s wrong with: No. Why do you need a law, especially a law that reinforces the public perception that we’re all self absorbed troglodytes?

“Twenty years ago, before the internet, we didn’t have that reputation. Now 80% of transactions don’t even really need a buyer’s agent.”

Say what?

It went on, defensively and testily. The internet’s the problem, we’re the victims. When I brought up separating buyer commission from listing commission, he said he hoped he was well out of the business before that happened.

It’s occurred to me: his opinion isn’t an anomaly; as I said here the biggest problem we face as an industry is our industry. I can’t begin to get my mind around treating clients as adversaries, Read more

May 18, 2007

By withholding the secrets of the mystical MLS system are we betraying the home-buyer’s interests?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In all my spare time, I’ve been working over the past few days on a real estate porn movie. The film features pictures from hundreds of homes, with loads of juicy details. We took the photos over the course of years, so it’s entirely possible that some of those homes are listed for sale right now. In making the movie available to the public, will we be “advertising” those listings without the listing broker’s permission? I don’t think we will be, but I also don’t give a damn. We have a right to our work product, and we have a right to do as we choose with our work product, and I will joyfully fight for my rights down to my last dime.

Let’s be obvious, at least for a moment. An appraisal is something you contract to have done and pay a substantial fee to obtain. Any state attorney general, even Arizona State Attorney General Terry Goddard, should be able to comprehend such a simple fact. In the same way, advertising is something you pay for. Quibblers will insist that paying web site hosting fees is alike unto paying publication line rates or broadcast fees. To this “argument,” the only reasonable retort is a Bronx cheer. When a word means almost anything, it means almost nothing.

The obvious fact is that MLS rules against advertising other broker’s listings without permission are devised to prevent Broker Paul from placing paid ads representing Broker Peter’s listings as his own. In fact, the motivating premise behind the rule is that Broker Paul, even while giving a false impression about his prowess as a lister, would nevertheless be promoting the homes in a positive light.

So why would Broker Peter object to free advertising of his listings? In other words, why does this MLS rule exist in the first place?

Too obvious, isn’t it? It’s because of the double dip. If Broker Paul advertises Broker Peter’s listings as his own, then Broker Peter might lose out on some opportunities to collect commissions from both sides of his transactions.

Real estate brokers implemented Buyer Agency not because they wanted to Read more

May 17, 2007

Defending Redfin: Sweet Digs weblog buried by inane MLS rules

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t like Redfin.com. Its “business” model consists of quietly diverting its agency responsibilities to listing agents while loudly rebating its largely unearned commissions to buyers. My experience of the president of the company, Glenn Kelman, is that he is an oily liar who will say anything to draw the fawning attentions of a gullible mainstream media. I don’t care about discount real estate brokerages in general — let the market sort them out — but Redfin’s modus vivendi is to exploit defects in the real estate industry — that it cannot get along without — while decrying those same defects in its tendentious and mendacious PR.

However: I believe in liberty before everything. Although Redfin will never enter most real estate markets — this being forbidden by a cost-structure that loses money on even the priciest of homes — it nevertheless has a valid complaint when it draws attention to anti-rebating and minimum-service real estate laws. The National Association of Realtors is an anti-capitalist cartel, as are state and local Realtors’ associations and local MLS systems. They are liars just like Kelman, loudly proclaiming their protection of the consumer’s interests while quietly enacting every Rotarian Socialist scheme they can think up.

Today John Cook’s Venture Blog reports that Redfin is being fined and forced to shut down one of its weblogs for violating one of those schemes:

The Northwest Multiple Listing Service has fined Redfin $50,000 and asked them to stop publishing a popular blog in which contractors for the online real estate brokerage posted reviews of Seattle area homes.

Redfin is appealing the fine, though it took steps this week to shut down the reviews on its “Sweet Digs” blog. With about 3,000 e-mail and online subscribers, the blog was written by 15 freelance reviewers who over the past five months posted reviews on about 1,000 homes in Seattle and San Francisco. The company says it plans to maintain the blog as a source of information on pricing trends and recently sold homes.

Redfin Chief Executive Glenn Kelman said he had no choice but to comply, noting that the NWMLS had threatened to Read more

May 16, 2007

Not to be missed: Marlow (The Hammer) Harris on the Redfin hustle

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Eminently worth waiting for:

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at those meetings with the investors and venture capitalists. Pie charts, graphs, facts, figures. Lots of talk about disintermediation and volume of scale and that sort of thing.

When Redfin fails, they won’t blame themselves, the business model, lack of planning, poor management skills or bad judgement. They will blame the NAR, the “real estate industrial complex”, and the “real estate monopoly”.

VC’s out there reading this, please, use your head. At this rate, you will never see a dime returned on your money. It will just go down the same hole where the other $8M already went, subsidizing the 150 or so buyers who got their 2% refund from Redfin. That was YOUR money!

Redfin believes real estate agents are overpaid. They want to reduce commissions. If they succeed, THERE WILL BE NOTHING TO REFUND. Their whole M.O., their raison d’etre, their entire business model disintegrates.

Priceless. Read the whole thing.

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May 16, 2007

60 Minutes Redux – What it means to be Nordstrom

by

Mortgage Banker

Author website

After the fur is done flying over the 60 Minutes piece what are we left with? What has really changed? Has Redfin “revolutionized” real estate? Well if offering rebates on commission is considered revolutionary count me among the witnesses. With 6, soon to be 8 markets, I think there is some time before everyone that’s not Redfin is out on the sidewalk with their hat in their hand.

But really, after the complaining of how UNFAIR it all was, it all is — what are YOU going to change?

In all of the complaints and defense I heard a favorite refrain. It seems everyone likes to toss the Nordstrom/Kmart analogy around whenever the full-service v. discounter argument arises. It’s like a broken record “Realtors offer Nordstrom-level service, Redfin is the Kmart of the real estate world” we all drone on. But do we really know what we’re saying; what we’re implying when we toss around our favorite analogy?

Because, truth be told, there ain’t that many Nordstroms folks. There just ain’t. So what makes you as a Realtor THE NORDSTROM REALTOR? Let’s look at some of the elements that helped the Nordstrom brand become synonymous with excellence and see how we stack up.

  1. Do we follow the motto: “Respond to Unreasonable Customer Requests”? How well do we respond to reasonable customer requests? When is the last time we left a truly remarkable memory with a customer? Do we relish rising to the challenge of unreasonable requests like Nordstrom does? Do we look at them with dread and think “How am I going to deal with this one?” or do we think “Here’s the opportunity to add another story to the growing legend of my customer service”?
  2. Do we “Use [our] good judgment in all situations”? Do we shirk responsibility when our gut tells us not too? Do we look at the phone at 4:59 on Friday ringing and not answer it? Do we start or end the day in a bad mood? Do we brush off someone because they don’t look like a potential customer? Do we skip the neighborhood mixer for the ballgame Read more
May 14, 2007

Talk to the Clown – Would You Like Fries With That?

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

I am here today to present to you my proposal for a new business venture. The Internet is a veritable candy store of wealth-creating opportunity, and it is our turn to capitalize. On-line shopping is BIG, I tell you, and it is time we got our piece of the pie.

But, we don’t have a product to sell.

So what? Neither does Amazon. That’s why I have identified the perfect target – the real estate industry. We will become agents and dehumanize the home buying process.

But, how will we attract customers?

The way I see it, there are two ways to establish ourselves in an established industry. Either we give them better service or we give them money. We aren’t in a position to do the former, that would just be hard, so we will do the latter. In order to give away money, we will have to redefine the service and deal in volume. Jack In the Box does not make money on their burgers. People come to them for the burgers, of course, but their profit margin is in the fries. And anyone can get a better burger at the steak house, they can get real service at the steak house, and they will leave having had a better dining experience with an A rated establishment, but people are inherently greedy. Houses will be our burgers, but volume will be our fries. Focus on the fries and forget the burgers.

But, (whispers), representing home buyers and sellers is hard work!

QUIET! Do not EVER suggest that real estate is hard work again. This kind of crazy talk will undermine all of our efforts.

But, just take the traditional pre-sale activities. The best, most effective listing agents spend thousands of dollars on a given home marketing and exposing the property, not to mention the time involved constantly improving and expanding their systems. Sometimes this is done for naught; the seller decides not to sell, and the agent is out-of-pocket. How can we afford to give money away?

We can’t, not by representing sellers. The costs of doing business are simply too great, and it is far Read more

May 13, 2007

60 Minutes’ Redfin.com story delivers 400 hits in 60 minutes flat . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Who says the old media is dead? In the hour just ended, Redfin.com’s Real Estate Consumer’s Bill of Rights: A wolf in sheepskin clothing had over 400 hits from organic search. Just think what might happen if the NAR made reasoned arguments instead of trying to club reality into shape with legislation…

(This search is why we’re getting the traffic. As with Zillow.com, we are the highest-ranking discouraging words on the topic. It’s up to you to determine where the intellectual leadership of the real estate industry resides…)

More: real estate 2.x emerges from its Howard Hughes-like seclusion to comment.

Further notice: Well. That was pretty lame. You can see the video here. Wouldn’t it be cool if a reporter could ask an intelligent question? Wouldn’t it be cool if both sides of a story were actually presented? Even so, the bottom line is: Big deal.

Still more: I commented on the TechCrunch.com post, not that anyone other than insiders cares about accuracy on these issues.

My initial comment:

[Quoting Michael Arrington]> Redfin is doing their best to completely remove real estate agents and brokers from at least half of a home sale.

This is incorrect. Redfin’s cost “savings” consists of pushing the cost of buyer representation off to the listing agent and the buyer. It “saves” money by not doing the work the buyer’s agent’s commission is intended to compensate. The net consequence, if no other changes are made in the real estate industry, is that sellers and listing agents are likely to change the way they provide for the buyer’s agent’s compensation. Redfin.com has never turned a profit, and, if its business model actually gets traction, the money it “rebates” will no longer be available to it.

This was Arrington’s response:

Greg – the fact is that the real estate market is seriously screwed up and needs to be disrupted. Agents are overpaid and often do little more than underprice a house to ensure a quick sale. The model needs to change, and Redfin is changing it. Good for them.

That rejoinder is devoid of any actual response to what I had said, but people are rarely Read more

May 10, 2007

The NAR’s Operation Tip-Off: How to make yourself look guilty by protesting your innocence

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Matthew Hardy of Real Estate Success Tools sends along a copy of the NAR’s press release on this Sunday’s 60 Minutes Redfin PR puff piece.

We are led by buffoons, avidly drawing attention to the stuff they want everyone to ignore. Two words is too many in reply to this crap: So what? Discount Realtors are nature’s perfect revenge on people who crave real estate discounts. The intelligent response is not to shout, like Redfin, “We’ll do nothing for even less!” but to offer a quality product at a fair price — and then actually deliver it.

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April 27, 2007

Houses Grow on Trees – Redfin Continues Quest for World Domination

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

What do you do when faced with windfall earnings? Reinvest in your business, of course.

Thanks to Cynthia Pang, Redfin’s Senior Communications Manager, for the links to the latest, exciting news. This has been a big week for Redfin! Not only did they roll out a new logo and invade Beantown, but (assuming they have fulfilled their contractual obligations) their San Diego client has removed contingencies and is one step closer to an approximate $13,000 windfall. As the new logo suggests, houses really do grow on trees.

You heard right: Redin is in escrow in San Diego. Taking our beach city by storm since their February 8th arrival in San Diego with much hoopla, this brings the total Redfin “represented” pending and closed sales in the San Diego market to (let’s see, add the column, carry the one) – One. Not being one to brag, this puts my total production during the same period at exactly 1000% more than Redfin’s, but then, I did have a head start. I’m thinking of expanding into the Greater Punxsutawney region next month.

April 7, 2007

Are Glenn Kelman & Dave Barry Soulmates?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Dave Barry sues Realtor associations. He has been suing Realtor associations for years. I don’t know that anyone could say that he sues Realtor associations for a living because he almost always loses. And it is hard to imagine that any lawyer who had a pot to piss in would keep doing the same stupid thing year after year after year – even though it was obvious to any rational person that it could not succeed. If Dave would like to send me a threatening letter or sue me for what I am writing here, this is my contact information. Dave Barry is behind Trust MLS. This is his “Open MLS” program that he tried (and failed) to get on the ballot in California in 2005. Now he is trying it in Maine. A much smaller state where it would require a LOT less money to try and shove this down everyone’s throat. I believe (Dave, please notice I said I BELIEVE, not “IS“‘) Dave to be a charter member of the “What’s Yours Is Mine Club”. This is also sometimes referred to as “something for nothing” or simply “criminal”. I don’t know if it would actually be libel to characterize him as a litigious lunatic, so we won’t do that here. Certainly, the NAR lawyers and the various state association lawyers aren’t going to come out and physically say that. Almost all lawyers (at least in the U.S.) have a “lawyer to lawyer respect” rule that they follow. It just isn’t right to say something unkind or inflammatory about someone who finished law school and was admitted to the bar – not if you finished law school and were admitted to the bar.

The following was reported yesterday on Inman News:

He is also a part of Trust MLS, a group that is supporting the Maine ballot initiative and encourages supporters in other states to pursue similar measures. This group, along with real estate companies Redfin, Catalist Homes and Voyager 360, among others, had offered financial support to the institute, and Trust MLS plans to submit a bid to operate the proposed Read more

April 2, 2007

Redfin.com’s Real Estate Consumer’s Bill of Rights: A wolf in sheepskin clothing . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I am a hardliner on the subject of reform in the real estate industry. Over the last nine months, I have written at great length about, among other things, the skill-set required to survive in the future of full-service real estate, empowering buyers, dual agency, how the NAR makes war on the free enterprise system, divorcing the buyer’s agent’s compensation from the listing agent’s fee, rebuilding the MLS without the co-brokerage fee, eliminating the IRS safe-harbor for real estate brokers to induce them to take responsibility for managing head-count, and getting rid of real estate licensing laws — or at least the broker’s level of licensing — to promote better competition among agents and better due diligence among consumers in hiring agents. There’s all that, plus much, much more.

Why am I going through my bona fides as a reformer? Because I am about to denounce a failed, flawed, fractured, false reform that is to be proposed today by Redfin.com. At first blush, this “Real Estate Consumer’s Bill of Rights” sounds like a good thing — and it easily could have been a good thing. Instead, it uses a treacly moral suasion and calls for new legislation to ram the corrupt Redfin style of doing business down everyone’s throats.

Start at the beginning. Yesterday, Kris Berg, Ardell DellaLoggia, Kevin Boer and I had this email from Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman:

Hope you’re having a good weekend. We wanted to let you know, under embargo until tomorrow at 9 a.m. (or whenever Inman goes live with the news), that we’re launching a program on Monday called the consumer bill of rights.

It doesn’t argue the issue of commission rates; we don’t consider it our business what others charge. It mostly focuses on simple reforms that would ensure that consumers get complete and open access to information about properties and the process of buying or selling properties.

The reason we’re asking you guys about it is that we want other brokers to support these rights. This is something constructive and positive, not antagonizing and negative — which itself is a result of coaching you’ve given us.
Read more

March 21, 2007

How to Waste 45 Minutes of Your Life

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

Every crazy person that works with us, we go crazy for them.

I finally got around to listening to the latest installment of the Glenn Kelman show, a video podcast by Robert Scoble (and posted on Sellsius). In all fairness, it wasn’t a complete waste of my time. I was able to learn or deduce the following important things:

  • Glenn may have skipped math class. He states that the average agent sells 8 homes in a year, yet “most (Redfin agents) do that many transactions in a week”. I seem to recall, and I will be generous here, that he told me that Redfin has approximately 300 transactions under their belt. I also seem to recall that there are 52 weeks in a year. Simple division; try it yourself.
  • Glenn cuts “commission refund checks… every day”. I seem to recall that there are 365 days in a year. More importantly, and assuming this wasn’t a figure of speech, if he is actually cutting checks versus offering a credit in escrow, I must assume that there are a bunch of 1099’s flying in the direction of the buyers. Given that I am not a tax guy, I could be wrong.
  • Robert Scoble’s house was SPECIAL. (No way!!!) As an example of just how special it was, he tells us twice that it sold for more than the Zestimate. We are all familiar with the power and the accuracy of the Zestimate, so enough said.
  • Robert Scoble’s house sold for what it did only because a family friend represented him. A family friend is naturally more concerned with protecting his interest than, say, a professional agent who is detached and therefore completely objective and who relies on the satisfaction of clients to generate referrals, a solid reputation, and future income.
  • A Redfin agent will “negotiate 1% better than another agent”. We are reminded that this is because the other agent makes more when the buyer pays more. This factoid is not substantiated by Glenn, so let me help. On a $500,000 home sale at 3%, let’s assume the agent sees 70% of the total commission (after office promo fee Read more
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