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Category: Redfin.com (page 6 of 8)

March 5, 2007

True reform in the real estate industry will not result from undermining buyer representation

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been sitting on a post from Jeff Corbett, The X-Broker, for a few days. Jeff Argues that Realty.bots will eliminate buyer’s agents. This actually ties in with recent announcements that major brokerages will be feeding listings to Realty.bots like Trulia.com and Google base. I get the idea Jeff thinks these are good things. I think he’s mistaken.

Start here: Jessica Swesey at InmanBlog asked:

If the DOJ wins and NAR is forced to retract policies, what is the likely chain of events to follow? Who wins and who loses?

My reply:

If the DOJ tries to play pirate with the current system, the big brokerages may go all in-house, which they could easily do already. Then there will be no small brokerages.

Jeff objects to this, but it’s not an unreasonable proposition.

Note, for example, the the overwhelming majority of listings in Tucson are held by one brokerage — Long Realty. Who gains more from the cooperative system imposed by the TARMLS system — Long or all the little brokerages competing against it? If Long pulled out of TARMLS, what would happen happen to those smaller players?

In Phoenix, the market is dominated by Realty Executives and by RE/Max, Keller Williams, Coldwell-Banker and Century 21 Franchises. If they pulled out of ARMLS, either in isolation or by forming a new big-boys-only MLS system, brokerages like mine would be wiped out overnight.

Too much of this debate is beside the point. Pundits simultaneously attribute too much and too little importance to the MLS. From a professional’s point of view, Realty.bots are not comparable to MLS systems, and they probably never will be. They are good for window-shopping by consumers, not for searching by professionals. But wresting control of the MLS away from brokers, somehow forcing them to produce content against their own interests, will not change anything that matters in the practice of residential real estate representation. The reason for this is simple: What is wrong in residential real estate representation has nothing to do with the MLS itself.

We’ll come back to that. First: Buyers buy from the selection that is available to them. This is true of everything Read more

March 2, 2007

The numbers are clearly bogus, Mr. Kelman. Show us the files . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Kevin Boer thought he found an error in Redfin’s accounting of its MLS results. What he found turned out to be trivial, which led to another round of war-hooping from the Redfin tribe.

Meanwhile, our new contributor James Hsu has demonstrated that Redfin’s horse runs behind the middle of the pack among big-name Seattle brokerages. In other words, as predicted, experienced traditional agents do out-perform Redfin’s salaried agents.

I finally took a look at Redfin’s spreadsheet today, which they were kind enough to share with me. There are two formulae for calculating the Sales Price to List Price ratio, but I’m not sure that matters. Ten houses sold for less that 65% of list, which I find amazing. More amazing still, nine sold for more than 150% of list. One of them sold for 1,068.526% of list.

One condominium sold for 10% of list price. At that price, I think I might have taken more than one. Condo buyers are smarter, though. Only four of them were willing to pay more than 144%, although a whole bunch sold for more than 110% of list. In Phoenix, they’d be investigating for loan fraud.

Here’s the cute part: Redfin sold 45 condominiums, of which 20 sold for more than its vaunted average performance of 99.340%. Okayfine, fewer than half. For residential listings, however, Redfin kindasorta sucked: Out of 125 sales, 70 homes sold for more than their average.

I named all kinds of reasons for holding Redfin’s claims in doubt. The overarching question — tough agents or tough clients? — is the one Redfin seeks to avoid. Its claims all week have been a textbook example of the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent: If P then Q, Q therefore P. If Redfin’s agents are tougher than average, then its ratios should beat the market. Redfin’s ratios beat the market (a specious if not actually false claim in any case), therefore Redfin’s agents are tougher than average. The conclusion does not follow, and the raw numbers seem to argue eloquently that the results achieved by Redfin’s clients were caused by Redfin’s clients, not by its agents. The skinflints did Read more

February 27, 2007

Does Redfin.com have tougher agents or tougher clients? A challenge in Bloodhound red . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I represented the buyer in the sale of a home worth $450,000. Luxury home on the first tee of an exclusive golf course, right next to a million-dollar custom-home lot.

How much did we pay? $310,000.

Now the truth is, I had an ideally-situated buyer and we were working with an ideally-dys-situated seller. Fortune favors the well-prepared, but, in the end, we simply got lucky.

But if I wanted to, I could present that story in such a way that, by the time I finished warming your ears, you’d want to rename Wednesday after me. (Take that, Odin!)

And welcome to Redfinland. They’re determined to take a victory lap, and let ’em. As Kevin Boer said to me in email:

In all fairness to Redfin, if the numbers had come out the opposite, the re.net would have been all over it, showing it as “proof” that they suck.

Indeed. And as much as CEO Glenn Kelman resists the characterization of Redfin.com as a discount real estate brokerage, it remains that their marketing appeal is based on saving clients’ money. It’s hard to doubt that discount-seekers would be discount-finders.

But, as I discussed last night, Redfin’s results are not a slam-dunk validation of its agents skills, zeal, rigor, vigor or charm. The much more likely explanation for the results it reports is that its clients — unlike swimmingly-besotted house-lovers — are congenitally low-balling INTJs and INTPs who do not focus on anything that can’t be expressed numerically.

Tougher agents or tougher clients? There is a way to find out for sure. Last night I made this proposal to Kelman:

I’ll make you a deal. Send me PDF scans of the 170 files. I’ll make a server available for FTP, and y’all can redact for personal details. I can reconstruct a transaction from the file, so I can vet the quality of the work in full, not just as regards price. For example, I can see how complicated the deals are, and how much Redfin’s buyer’s agents are bringing to the transaction. I’ll report my findings in detail, and you can get your incredible PR machine to promote them far and wide. Read more

February 26, 2007

Thinking skeptically to rain on Redfin.com’s parade . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m not a Jesuit, but I play one on BloodhoundBlog. The real truth is, I’m a roll-your-own Jesuit, more auto-didact than anything. I didn’t have Brian Brady’s inestimable advantage of having had the gift of reason literally pounded into me. Instead, I had to stuff it between my own ears by hand. But one way or another, lay student or Brother, if you walk in the path of Ignatius Loyola, you learn to think skeptically. Any affirmative claim is far more likely to be false than true.

This morning, Redfin.com posted a claim that MLS results “prove” that Redfin agents are better negotiators than other agents in the Seattle area. If CEO Glenn Kelman had made a claim like this in Brother Paul’s class, he’d be up late tonight writing a paper, striving either to prove or disprove it.

The problem is not that the claim is necessarily false. The problem is that that there are so many ways that it might be false that, to call it true without eliminating each one of these canards and false paths is an inherently tendentious statement — suasion, not persuasion.

Before I begin work on my much shorter paper on why the claim is dubious, I want to raise three meta-issues. First, I do not have access to the underlying data. If I did, I might write a much longer and much more conclusive paper. Second, I would have much greater faith in the mainstream media if more reporters were tuned to a Jesuitical tenor of skepticism. And third, the tabbed browser window is an excellent tool for organizing the resources to be used in an exercise like this.

First, Redfin claims that its results rebut the claim that a salaried (and possibly inexperienced) agent will not negotiate as aggressively as a traditional real estate agent working on a straight commission compensation plan:

After a year in the market, we decided to put our theory to the test, by querying the Northwest Multiple Listing Service for data on every home or condominium sold via a brokerage from February 6, 2006 (the date of Redfin Direct’s launch) through February Read more

February 23, 2007

Redfin.com’s Glenn Kelman issues a non-apology apology: This is what it sounds like when pigs fly . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Oh, good grief…

If Redfin.com wants to make peace with the real estate industry, all it has to do is hold up its end. If it wants to be a cowbird bottom-feeding parasite — defaulting on its responsibilities and disbursing that default as “savings” — it has to live with the contempt fully earned and deserved by cowbird bottom-feeding parasites.

Glenn Kelman should take solace — or take a drink — or just take a nap — however. The contempt Redfin.com earns doesn’t originate in his inflammatory comments — even if these are really, truly, honestly, please-please-you-must-believe-me a real estate-specific form of Tourette Syndrome.

Did any one of us make it through middle school without understanding demagoguery? If so, here are the review notes:

The skinny kid spewing half-witted insults is a coward who is terrified of two things: That his posturing is ludicrous, and that you know it…

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February 10, 2007

Redfin.com’s CEO Glenn Kelman: “What if the parasites had to eat the parasites?”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It’s been a Redfin week for us. Kris Berg recorded her podcast with Glenn Kelman last week and I spent much of my spare time this week dealing with it. Allen Butler dealt with the audio quality, and then Cathleen and I went through the recording, pulling out apposite quotes for my own post.

I think we did the BloodhoundBlog idea credit, though: Kris demonstrated that an informed insider can ask much more pertinent questions, digging much deeper, than can mainstream journalists.

I’d like to cite another Redfin post as the first-ever recipient of the Odysseus Medal. Marlow Harris of 360 Digest gave us “Thank you, Mr. Kelman” yesterday, and I think it is a particularly good example of the real estate weblogger’s art.

Marlow has been on top of Redfin from the very beginning. Some of my first links from BloodhoundBlog were to Marlow’s Redfin posts. But all that notwithstanding, yesterday’s post was excellent irrespective of content: Rich in detail, peppered with links, written in an engaging, can’t put it down style. This is a level of quality unsurpassed on the RE.net.

And the winner of this week’s Cheez-Whiz Prize is… Redfin.com. I have never bought Kelman’s charm offensive, and events since Kris Berg’s interview seem to bear me out. (As a side note, Cynthia Pang, Redfin’s PR maven, was nothing but sweet and painstakingly efficient throughout this process.)

First, to claim to have reformed is easy, it’s the actual reforming that’s hard. We are what we do, not what we say we do. A common dodge of recidivist miscreants is the insistence that their behavior is not bad, it is your own misunderstanding of the good intentions motivating that behavior that is at fault. If you listen to the podcast, you will hear Kelman resort to that defense again and again.

Can you hear Eric Burden singing? “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” The song is about a wife-beater. It’s worth your while to remember that style of rationalization for egregious behavior.

Abandoning whatever hope he might have had to extend an olive branch to the Read more

February 9, 2007

What if Redfin gave a PR offensive and nobody came?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We pulled out all the stops for Redfin.com’s announcement yesterday because we thought it was important news. Such insiders we are, like Obscure Sports Quarterly subscribers glued to ESPN-8 for the Women’s Curling Semi-Finals. On and off all morning, I combed Google and Technorati for news, linking to what I found. Bottom line: Big yawn.

Redfin employee Matt Goyer provides a similar rundown, catching a few that I missed. Goyer also does the kind of stupid Realty.bot math trick that we have learned to expect from fawning news coverage of stupid Realty.bots: In adding three agents, Redfin.com grew by 340%. No, the number of MLS listings on its stupid Realty.bot grew by 340%. Redfin grew its head-count and its burn rate.

The only truly amazingly stupid math I saw, though, was at The Real Estate Economy, which cannot tell an apple from an orange, but which knows they must be equal if there are a million of them:

When Redfin gets up to six cities, it should carry a total of about a million listings on any given day, roughly the same that rival Trulia currently stocks.

It would take an hour to sort out every idiocy in that one sentence, and that may be the actual problem: The Realty.bot revolution is being fomented by geeks who can’t do the math and is being heralded by dinks who can’t think at all.

Marlow Harris, by pointed contrast, shows us what can be done with a fully-functioning mind and an insider’s insight:

One of the problems I have with Redfin is their continual commoditization of the bad-boy stance, their claim of being the outsider, the renegade ready to fight against The Man, ready to defend their clients against the Real Estate Industrial Complex, when in reality the business is made up of hundreds of thousands of individuals. There’s no cartel. There are thousands of little real estate offices all across the U.S., with 100’s of MLS’s, each with their own rules. Redfin has co-opted the power of dissent by appropriating the language and symbolism of non-conformist youth and tech/geek culture. By inserting themselves into the real estate equation, Read more

February 8, 2007

Podcast with Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman: “We’re looking for nerds living in nice houses”

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman and his Senior Communications Director, Cynthia Pang. Let me begin by saying that I waltzed into my local Starbucks anticipating a date with the devil. While I exited no more enamored with their business model, I have to admit that both Glenn and Cynthia were a delight. No horns, no forked tails and no speaking in tongues (well, not exactly).

My impression of Glenn was one of a passionate entrepreneur who genuinely believes in his work. He struck me as honest and sincere, and I thoroughly enjoyed our brief time together. Having said that, I don’t get the impression that he entirely understands the depth of our business or of our duties as agents and fiduciaries. Some of his core premises strike me as fundamentally flawed from the standpoint of end game success or, worse, as ingredients in a recipe for future liability claims and outright failure.

I could be wrong. Divergent opinions and perspectives are what make our world go round. So, I would like to thank Glenn and Cynthia for their time. It may surprise some to know that I honestly wish them much success, as I believe their success will only be found (if it is truly realized at all) in a niche market sense.

So, Redfin, welcome to San Diego!

More: Kris Berg’s husband, Steve, has a very thorough Redfin post at The San Diego Home Blog. Los Angeles Times. Redfin.com’s weblog. (Ahem. Gertrude Stein’s ungrateful whine about Oakland was “There is no there there.”) Kevin Boer at The San Francisco Bay Area Real Estate Blog illustrates the demographics of Redfin’s move. The Future of Real Estate Marketing. More from Kevin Boer.

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February 8, 2007

Glenn Kelman on Redfin.com’s move into Southern California: “I’ve never had to think so hard in an interview in my life”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s the newspaper news, and we’ll come back to it in due course: Redfin.com today opens three new offices in Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. The company has expanded its web site to include listings from nine Southern California MLS systems.

Here’s the real news, which emerges from a forty-five-minute podcast interview made by BloodhoundBlog contributor and San Diego-based Realtor Kris Berg with Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman: Redfin.com is not profitable at present and may never achieve a reliable state of profitability. Most notably, Kelman’s willingness to reverse himself on unpopular but cost-saving policies may ultimately doom the company, at least in its present configuration as a discount brokerage.

The immediate problem is simply the payroll. As Kelman says in the interview:

What investors worry about with Redfin is the margin in the model. So today we generate about a 50% margin out of real estate operations. So for every dollar we make, we have to pay fifty cents to one of our agents. And we have to pay our agents more than we initially thought, just because we wanted to to get good people.

Redfin’s agents are salaried employees, not the more typical independent contractor paid on some sort of commission sales plan.

A new Realtor in a traditional brokerage offering training would expect to earn from 50% to 90% of the total available commission offered for the sale of a the home — which might be 3% of the purchase price.

A more experienced Realtor working in a brokerage with no training could expect to keep 95% or more of earned commissions.

Redfin concedes two-thirds of the buyer’s agent’s commission to the buyer, with half of the remainder going to compensate its agents. By this we can see that Redfin agents are being paid substantially less than successful Realtors in other types of brokerages. Even so, Kelman concedes, “We’ve got it around fifty cents, and that’s not enough to pay our developers.”

Since launching as a brokerage, Redfin.com has met with considerable criticism for some of its more unorthodox business practices. At first, the company advised buyers to appeal directly to the listing Read more

January 30, 2007

Redfin and the antics of the INTx crowd . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

By my lights, one of the most interesting bits of news to come out of Inman Connect was Redfin’s announcement that they plan to swim into Boston Harbor. Washington State has reasonably normal wild-West real estate laws, as does California. The natural leap, in terms of maintaining a decent level of sanity over legal compliance, would be to migrate to nearby states — Nevada and Arizona leap to mind.

There is a problem with this idea, though. The median home price in Phoenix is around $260,000. In Las Vegas, the median is around $300,000. If Redfin proposes to give back two-thirds of a $9,000 commission, there is a word for what’s left: Doodly.

Unlike a true bottom-feeder, Redfin has encysted itself with a boatload of dead-heading barnacles. This is why it keeps trying to grow into luxury markets: The company needs one third of a bigger commission bite even to make a pretense at covering its inflated payroll.

Kris Berg points out today that this is a less than brilliant strategy, inasmuch as buyers and sellers of luxury homes are busy people who have the money to pay for the kind of roll-out-the-red-carpet service they have come to expect. “We do nothing for less” is not a winning value proposition, generally speaking, among prosperous people.

There is an exception to this rule, however. Kris hints at it by suggesting that younger people might be attracted to Redfin. They might, but few of them are buying or selling at the $500,000 level and above. Redfin actually sends a stronger hint by announcing their plans to jump to Boston.

A couple of months ago, I was on the phone with Galen Ward. He suggested to me that, while Redfin’s approach to the marketplace was only popular with hi-tech Seattlites for now, eventually they would be seen as early-adopters and the business model would meet broad acceptance in the marketplace. This is a colorable proposition, I suppose.

Just after Inman, I mentioned on Rain City Guide that I thought Move, Inc’s. Alan Dalton had mopped up Redfin’s Glenn Kelman in their debate. The example I offered was this: If you Read more

January 30, 2007

Ladies and Gentlemen – Meet the Flintstones

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

In the evolutionary chain of technology, I am somewhere between the Greg Swanns and Dustin Luthers of this world and, well, the Flintstones. Let’s just call me the missing link.

My generation wasn’t born into a world where computers, much less websites and blogs and mash-ups and code, existed. With each new technological advancement, we boomers learned to adapt or face extinction. The majority of us have learned just enough to be dangerous; given enough interest and perceived benefit, we have watched those around us and learned to apply the tools as they were introduced into our society. As for our parents and grandparents, meet the Flintstones. For many (most) of this segment, information technology was introduced too late in their era. My grandmother loves her computer to play Solitaire, but you will never find her converting a PDF to a JPEG or hanging out in a chat room. For all practical purposes, she is a dinosaur. Then there are our children. They have never know a world without personal computers, digital cameras, scanning and faxing. They will not remember a time without YouTube or MySpace except when these things are replaced with more advanced applications.

So, here comes the Redfin segue. Steve and I have been having some lengthy discussions lately about the Redfin model and its potential for broad success. Sure, we are a little short in the recreational-life category, but it has been a topic of discussion because I was recently invited to meet with Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman to “chat”. This being the eve of that meeting, it seemed apropos to reflect on the topic.

From my vantage point, this is the $64 question: How will Redfin succeed where so many others have failed? Or, rather, who is their audience? HelpUSell, Zip Realty and other discount business models have had a limited audience at best; they are not, nor do I believe they will ever be, setting the world on fire and achieving significant market share. Of course, Redfin is approaching the issue from a standing-on-their-head perspective. While they pay lip service to the listing side of the equation, their Read more

January 15, 2007

The Plastic Pig (and How to Pick Your Agent)

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

A million years ago, my mother won the office football pool. It was a Pick the Winners contest, and she did it with a plastic pig. Now, keep in mind that this is the same woman that found herself relegated to her bed for a week after losing the rubber match of “Who Can Jump Over the Most Boxes in the Backyard” to my then 14-year-old brother. Evel Knievel she wasn’t.

Anyway, she had this hysterically funny wind-up pig that, when activated, would spin furiously on its base, squealing all the while. Her scientific winner-picking method, the envy of any Vegas sports book, involved circling the team name which resided in the ultimate landing vector of the pig’s tail. When she collected the booty this particular weekend, a guy at the office replied in disgust, “I can’t believe I was beat by a plastic pig”.

Certain events of the past week have led me to believe that too many people are relying on the plastic pig method in selecting their real estate agent. Now, an agent plays many roles, but marketing and exposure of your home is first and foremost. Without an interested buyer and without an offer, an agent’s professed superiority in negotiations and contract management will be meaningless and in fact go untested. The listings without photos or well-written text, the agent voice mail messages declaring that “all calls received after 5:00 PM will be returned the next business day” (or on the Autumnal Equinox, whichever occurs last), the show instructions which involve 24-hour notice, a silent prayer to the East and the winning lotto ticket are all things I have encountered. All, unfortunately, serve only to keep agents and their buyers away.

My latest reminder that all agents are not deserving of the listings with which they have been entrusted came in the form of a phone call from a frustrated shopper. Three messages to the agent’s number in the ad and 48 hours later, she was still trying to make an appointment to see a property. Ultimately, she pulled my number off of another sign in the neighborhood in a Read more

November 22, 2006

Trevor Responds and shows he is a nice guy

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Anonymous Coward… Thank you for at least acknowledging that you are one. I have never seen the experience you are referring to take place here at JLSPCR. (I guess I am not even really clear what you are saying, in the first place though.)

Russell Shaw – 1.)Your point about making the MLS public is a great one. I will contemplate that, and rethink my philosophy.2.)I just plain think your wrong about Redfin, and I can’t imagine that we will be coming to a meeting of the minds anytime soon. My thought is this though… I don’t think Paul Allen’s Venture Capitalist Company, Vulcan Capital, would be investing in a company that is criminal or that will be shutting their doors anytime soon. I am taking a risk by applying Redfin… the same kind of risk as people who applied at Google did in 1998.

3.) Thank you for your objectivity regarding discount brokers. I think you are right about Help-U-Sell

Phil –
The reason my business model struggles in a traditional brokerage is because many traditional brokers are ripping agents off, becoming rich of their agents backs. The whole real estate industry needs a shake up, starting with the brokers. You can read my thoughts on this here: http://bluecollaragents.com/wordpress/?p=13

Phew… I think I answered most of the challenges. I think I want to take a break from blogging for a while and eat Turkey. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

1. I totally agree with Trevor with regard to his comments to Anonymous Coward – I always have far more respect for opinions when they are connected to a real name.

2. I HAVE to point out that although I fully understand Trevor’s view’s regarding Paul Allen (because I once thought exactly the same way – if it was backed by Paul Allen I didn’t need to worry) the facts are that Mr. Allen has a track record of wasting HUGE amounts of money by investing in companies that wind up closing their doors once he stops feeding them. His post-Microsoft successes have all come from companies that were already quite prosperous and also had existing competent management teams, Read more

November 20, 2006

Dual Agency Smack-Down – Russell Answers Up

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Trevor Smith writes:

First, I want to say that you are incredibly articulate and a great writer. You know what you believe, you’ve researched it, and you stand by it. So, as far as that goes I respect you.

Second, I am with John L Scott, where I charge 4% commission for a full service listing package. I love John L Scott, and my Broker has been very supportive of my business model.Third, I recently interviewed with Redfin. This is not because I don’t like John L Scott, but becasue I believe in Redfin’s model. I believe that the REALTORs who will succeed in the next 30 years will likely adapt to a model similar to Redfin’s (ie lower commissions)

I would point out that since John L. Scott is a proven company and Redfin isn’t – your odds of success are far greater at your present home. If your present company – I believe it is the largest and most successful real estate brokerage firm in the entire northwest – is willing to support you in your desired business model, wouldn’t it make more sense to stay there? Check around and find out what the most successful John L. Scott agents earn and compare that to what the most successful Redfin agents earn.

If Redfin were not a public company (one supported by raising cash from investors) they wouldn’t even have their doors open now. It isn’t a sustainable business model. You are free to ignore my comments and to believe that I am “biased” against them because they are a discounter, but you would be wrong in that assumption. Many companies are “discounters” and do quite well and I have no quarrel with them either.

Fourth, by interviewing at Redfin, I learned EXACTLY how Redfin operates their business, and so when you say that Redfin is not procuring cause… respectfully you’re the monkey… because you’re wrong. Redfin, does show houses to their buyers, does do the paperwork, and does take it to closing. That is procuring cause.

There may be circumstances and transactions where they aren’t guilty of violating procuring cause, nevertheless, that business model Read more

November 19, 2006

Redfin Again

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Trevor Smith writes (and I respond):

Your comment about Redfin is not only ignorant it is probably borderline libel.

Please feel free to pass my comments and my contact information along to them.

Do you even know exactly what services Redfin does or does not provide?

No. What I do know is that they are attempting to build a business model based on the buyer finding the house themselves (in many cases seeing it via the listing agent) and then going to Redfin to have them write the contract.

Redfin is not doing much less than your typical traditional agent, and they are providing their customers thousands in refunds… hmmm sounds like a great business model to me.

In most states there is a little issue called procuring cause. Here is how Redfin handles it – per their website.

If you are referring to the fact that they do not show their buyers prospective properties, this is no longer true either. So, as far as I am concerned, praise God for Redfin and other discounters who are awakening America to the fact that REALTORS are overpaid.

Your email address would seem to indicate that you ARE an agent with John L. Scott (known to be a highly successful and very reputable full service company) so truthfully, I do find it a bit odd that you choose to praise God for Redfin.

The part that would not align with your own long term survival is your belief that Realtors are overpaid – if in fact, you are one. The FTC monkeys (I believe I originally referred to them as “Howler Monkeys”) share your belief – so you aren’t alone on this point. Additionally, you state that Redfin isn’t doing much less than the typical traditional agent. Yes they are – they are not really performing the vital functions of any traditional buyer agent: taking the customer from the initial contact all the way through to the closing. They are asking the buyer to go and find the house and then “give us a call and we will write it up for you”.

I have no quarrel with any agent Read more

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