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Missoula, Montana, Sergeant Mulvaney, and how I fell in love with Redfin?s
2008-06-09 22:36:00 As a Redfin agent, I’m on the phone with clients most of the day. First Time Homebuyers, Dealhounds, Investors, Upsizers, and Downsizers all make an impact on my daily life. The other day I realized something- most people would be either apathetic or cynical after dealing with this many people day in and day out. ...
Missoula, Montana, Sergeant Mulvaney, and how I fell in love with Redfin?s
2008-06-09 22:36:00 As a Redfin agent, I’m on the phone with clients most of the day. First Time Homebuyers, Dealhounds, Investors, Upsizers, and Downsizers all make an impact on my daily life. The other day I realized something- most people would be either apathetic or cynical after dealing with this many people day in and day out. ...
Cheating with Redfin
2008-05-05 22:28:00 While in general we believe that more information is better, we recently learned how the information on our website can be used for indecorous purposes. The winner of DC Metrocentric’s most recent PriceChecker competition used Redfin to look up the price of a DC condo, rather than make a guess. DC Metrocentric is a blog ...
How to offer full price on a listing, have a 6 month escrow period, spend $
2008-05-03 19:58:00 Recently Redfin limited the types of short sales they service. To some this may seem “anti-consumer” in that we are limiting the choices of what our customers can make an offer on. However, I believe this is the most pro-consumer thing Redfin has done since rebating 2/3rds of its Buyer’s Agent Commission. Here’s why: By making an ...
Correcting the Weighted Average in the Redfin Advantage
2008-04-24 18:15:00 Redfin reported on the Redfin Advantage last month, analyzing 65,242 records from the Multiple Listing Services that brokers use to share listing data in the Bay Area and Seattle. Our goal was to understand whether Redfin customers fared as well as customers of traditional brokers in their negotiations, so we compared the price our customers ...
Redfin Select: School-Marmish Innovator?s Dilemma? Becoming What They Hat
2008-04-09 08:03:00 With surprisingly little fanfare, Redfin, that pesky little Seattle brokerage the real estate industry loves to hate, announced yesterday their “Redfin Select” program, which looks suspiciously more and more like … a traditional brokerage offering. Redfin’s initial business model, which made great sense in the VC’s conference rooms, was to outsource a big chunk of the ...
Redfin?s March Madness Comes to NPR
2008-03-19 12:43:00 Out of nowhere last week, an NPR producer sent us a note asking about Redfin’s March Madness plans. At first I thought she was talking about last week’s open houses release. Then I was about to say we aren’t doing anything special, but double-checked first with Redfin power forwards Klaus Gosma and Loren Ellingson, who ...
If you live in the Rain City, like beer (or mexican food), and are curious
2008-03-10 03:09:00 ….then this event’s for you.
Why clients need the Power of the Donald
2008-03-08 05:12:00 Greg Swann in his interview with Real Estate Radio today reminded me about something that I hadn’t thought about it in a while: The firing clause. I believe the firing clause is an essential practice for any agent who desires to be consumer friendly. Essentially, the firing clause is just that, a clause that allows a client to fire ...
No Cold Calling and Free Lunch?. Redfin is Hiring
2008-03-07 02:27:00 Redfin is in the process of taking resumes and interviewing Agents in Seattle (and likely San Francisco, SoCal, Boston, DC, and Chicago, but I am not in the loop with those markets). We recently had a contest to write a job posting that realistically represents what we do at Redfin. Here is what I came up ...
Defining Online Real Estate
2008-03-04 22:29:00 One of Redfin’s biggest criticisms is that we are simply a discounter in Web 2.0 clothing. All along Redfin has come back and said - we’re not a discounter, we’re an online real estate brokerage. Unfortunately, this was like telling someone from Christoper Columbus’ time that you’re a race car driver or an astronaut - it sounds ...
Nike, Ipod, and Grape Juice Communion
2008-02-09 06:02:00 Yesterday I went on a run with my Nike-iPod. I love this technological contraption. It’s absolutely magnificent. It tells me how long I have run, how many calories I have burned, and how many miles I have gone, all why playing Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want have Fun. My love for this contraption brought the usual questions to my ...
Redfin on King 5
2008-02-06 21:16:00 King 5 News (NBC Affiliate in Seattle) came down to our Seattle office for a story on Redfin’s business model. My friends Loren, Earnest, Marco and Klaus got their 15 minutes (or 1/3rd of a second) of fame with a few flattering head shots. Take a look Best part of the piece: Glenn tells the story of a prankster ...
What would a Microsoft/Yahoo deal mean to real estate? Not much.
2008-02-02 06:43:00 Today if you visit MSN Real Estate, you will find the same gossipy real estate articles that you would expect to see on Inside Edition or Entertainment Tonight. However if you visit Yahoo Real Estate, you will find a more serious real estate website, complete with mapping technology, zestimates, foreclosure listings, and mortgage calculators. So, what would a buyout of Yahoo from Microsoft ...
The NAR deletes Redfin from New York Times Article - DoublePlusGood That
2008-02-01 20:06:00 In the book 1984, Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth took care of rectifying any errors of previous news articles, history books, and other similar types of media. Thank God we have the NAR to take care of that dirty job for the real estate industry. A day after this New York Times article came out featuring Redfin, Zillow, ...
And the Creepiness Award Goes to?
2008-02-01 03:58:00 One of Redfin’s savvy Forum writers picked up on this home which is using mannequins as a staging tool. I think this probably takes staging 1 step too far. No doubt it makes potential home buyers jump… just probably not into a contract.
Comp Homes from your Mac Baby
2008-02-01 01:15:00 Redfin today launched version 4.4 of the website. Many of my friends and colleagues worked incredibly hard on making this release happen. After it launched this morning, I received an email from one of my co-workers which said “Wow! I feel like an idiot for only thinking this was a *big* release. This is a *huge* ...
Redfin CEO Says He?s Being Picked On
2008-01-29 22:33:00 Below is an article about the Discount Realtor Redfin’s CEO Glenn Kelman, who, having failed to achieve more than niche success in the real estate industry (despite a couple of years of gushing media adoration and favorable stories on shows such as 60 minutes), claims now that he’s being picked on. Dude, you were thumping ...
Redfin, Trulia, Terabitz, and Zillow in the Times
2008-01-28 18:54:00 According to a New York Times article today, the online real estate industry is pressing on despite the worst real estate market in recent history. All 4 Executives report aspects of growth over last year’s numbers. Read the Article John Cook’s Venture Blog
Lead Capture: The Cardinal Sin
2008-01-26 04:42:00 I see so many real estate websites still using lead capture systems that require names and email addresses in order to view listings or pertinent data in a listing (Price, Address). People hate this. They absolutely hate it…. and if you are doing it you should absolutely stop it. Here’s why: People don’t trust you with their email addresses… and rightfully ...
Redfin Launches Boston, DC Sweet Digs
2008-01-23 19:58:00 Yesterday, Redfin added to its SWAT team of real estate bloggers by hiring nine local bloggers to cover the Boston and Washington DC real estate markets. This adds to Redfin Sweet Digs Blogroll in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego. The bloggers are, “IT professionals, college professors, and broadcast journalists who moonlight as Redfin ...
A Question and Answer Session from Googlers
2008-01-12 05:25:00 Every so often I cruise my Statcounter log in order to see how the people who visit BCA find us. In general, about 80-90% find the blog through Google. Statcounter also shows me the search query that brought them to the blog. For instance, the most popular search query is for a photo of the Tacoma Public Library (Is that pathetic or what?). ...
Redfin Turns Conventional Wisdom on its Head
2007-12-15 01:56:00 The PR machine that is Redfin is rolling again. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman appeared on the Today show this morning and he and co-host Meredith Viera proceeded to engage in a conversation jammed full of startling revelations the computer scientists /sleuths at Redfin have uncovered using “The Science of Real Estate”. Brace yourself folks — this stuff ...
Redfin on the Today Show ?¦ tomorrow!
2007-12-13 18:47:00 We’re going to be on the Today Show Friday morning! Are we joining Al Roker for the weather (and housing) forecast? We’ve been sworn to secrecy, but tune in Friday morning around 7:40 a.m. (same time in each time zone) to find out. And it’s LIVE, so you know what that means “¦ anything can happen. ...
Redfin has search options!?
2007-11-21 20:15:00 While one wing of the Redfin office wrestles about changes to the home tours program the other wing of the office is up in arms over how we surface search options on the map page. When we re-designed our website in April one of the changes we made was hiding the search options. The reasoning ...
Why I Chose To Be A Redfin Agent
2007-11-21 20:13:00 As an agent with a traditional brokerage I was continually surprised at how much of my job was selling myself instead of selling real estate. Suddenly everyone became a potential and desperately needed paycheck (a great way to alienate friends by the way). Since clients come to Redfin, we don’t have to ...
Redfin Rolls Out The Red Carpet
2007-11-08 22:31:00 We are voices without faces. We are emoticons. We are Redfin Direct Agents. On Tuesday, November 13th, all of that changes. Redfin is opening our Seattle headquarters to current clients, past clients, and those on the fence. You will be treated to the finest pizza and beer that $300 can buy and demo unreleased website features ...
Redfin, Explained In Cute Little Drawings and a North Carolina Accent
2007-11-05 21:56:00 Redfin has been futzing around with videos for years. We all thought a video was the best way to explain how to buy a house online, but nobody wanted to be in one. We experimented with Angela interviewing me at double-speed so that our voices sounded funny; we recorded a screen-capture of a new release ...
Stanford Students Interview Redfin (Not the Other Way Around)
2007-10-18 03:52:00 Redfin just wrapped up its first big day of on-campus recruiting, in Palo Alto. Since we didn’t actually reserve a room on Stanford’s campus, this involved sitting in a café for nearly seven hours straight and guzzling hot chocolates made from asphalt by surly French baristas. Listening to the students’ poised recitation of accomplishments in robot-programming ...
Redfin Palo Alto Meet-Up Today?¦
2007-10-16 14:40:00 Attention Redfin customers, would-be customers, job-seekers, students, start-up junkies, bloggers, real estate quibblers, grudge-holders and anyone else who would like to meet: legendary Redfin engineering leader Sasha Aickin and I will be in Palo Alto today from 3:15 ““ 3:45 at Caffe del Doge, and again at around 6, for as long as people want ...
Redfin Model on Kawasaki Blog?¦
2007-10-15 15:25:00 For those of you who like to track our daring exploits around the web, Redfin has posted a generic version of its financial model along with a brief overview of what might be useful about it on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Whereas the initial post provided a few actual data-points, this one offers only sample data, ...
Redfin.com - Real Valuation Number vs. Reality
2007-10-03 22:35:00 Guy Kawaski posted an insightful post comparing Redfin's financial valuation numbers to reality during two years of operation, courtesy of CEO Glenn Kelman. I was surprised to see how accurately the model predicted some of the costs associated to operations, taxes and services, and in contrast how far off it was when it came to HR/ recruiting. and recruiting.
Redfin Changing Tunes: We?re Not Just Cheaper, We?re Better ? Even if We Ca
2007-10-03 20:12:00 It’s been a while since I beat this dying horse but recent comments were far too difficult to ignore for long … And yet compared to other brokerages, Redfin?s business may thrive in the coming storm. After all, we?re at the beginning of one of the greatest buyer?s markets in U.S. real estate history, and Redfin ...
FoREM Joins Inman? Or Redfin buys FoREM?
2007-10-02 16:16:00 Joel Burslem runs one of my favorite real estate blogs, Future of Real Estate Marketing (FoREM). Today I noticed this in my daily email notice from Inman News: I clicked on the link thinking there might be some announcement I missed. But I just wound up on the home page of FoREM. Yesterday Kevin Boer briefly alluded ...
How Come Redfin?s P&L Looks Distinctly Unlike That Of A Traditional Real Es
2007-10-02 07:40:00 Tipped off by another insightful Greg Swann piece (Greg — do you ever sleep?) I just read through Glenn Kelman’s fascinating soul-baring finances-revealing post over on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. As a serial entrepreneur — and quite a successful one at that — Glenn has certainly done more than his fair share of financial modeling, ...
Redfin, By the Numbers, And an Experiment
2007-10-01 15:29:00 After popping up on TechCrunch and BusinessWeek Friday and in Slashdot over the weekend, Redfin appeared on Guy Kawasaki’s blog today, in a post comparing our planned costs to our actual costs. For those putting together a financial model, here are a few bonus links: 1. On the amount of office space recommended by brokers. ...
What, Me Worry? Redfin in a Buyer?s Market?¦
2007-10-01 12:30:00 This is shaping up to be the winter of our discontent. High real estate prices were once a threat to the middle class; now low real estate prices are a threat to the middle class. Reporting last Friday that new homes sales’ hit a seven-year low, USA Today’s Noelle Knox quotes an economist as saying “this ...
Redfin Hits The New York Times
2007-09-09 00:29:00 The front page of yesterday’s New York Times business section discusses traditional real estate agents who are leaving the industry, those who have stayed, and — woo-hoo! — Redfin’s growth. The article has been the #1 most-emailed business story, but in the general polls still trails an expose of microwave popcorn’s role in lung disease ...
Good Vibes - Deborah 2 - Redfin 0
2007-09-01 03:04:00 Spotted in the comments of The Boston Real Estate Blog… Author: Deborah ArendsComment:Hi, Here is an update on the property I listed in August that was listed before with Redfin. We sold it within days! The transaction is already closed. This is the second listing I have had that was previously listed with Redfin for months, ...
Redfin: Lost in Translation
2007-08-16 00:48:00 This afternoon I received a call from my training director, who was approached by several agents in our Surprise office discussing the possibility of listing their homes on Redfin. They apparently thought Redfin was another online real estate portal, a la Zillow or craigslist. My reply was to ask if they’d also like to put their ...
Bust Out the Doughnuts! Redfin Shows Up in the Weekend Papers?¦
2007-08-13 04:43:00 Much to our surprise, Redfin’s conversation with Guy Kawasaki about why a start-up can seem hard instead of easy cropped up in The New York Times over the weekend, rising to one of the top spots for most emailed business articles. Rumor has it that Redfin founder David Eraker will even be making a cameo ...
Kevin Kelly Blogs Up His Redfin Home-Buying Experience
2007-08-09 01:01:00 Kevin Kelly, who is our hero mostly for having edited the Whole Earth Catalog but also for having been a member of the founding team behind Wired Magazine, just blogged about a house he bought through Redfin! Kevin describes the site as “one of the easier ones to use, with nice virtual walk thrus of each ...
Kevin Kelly Blogs Up His Redfin Home-Buying Experience
2007-08-09 01:01:00 Kevin Kelly, who is our hero mostly for having edited the Whole Earth Catalog but also for having been a member of the founding team behind Wired Magazine, just blogged about a house he bought through Redfin! Kevin describes the site as “one of the easier ones to use, with nice virtual walk thrus of each ...
Redfin: Knockoff-ee or Knockoff-er
2007-08-07 00:32:00 Redfin’s Glenn Kelman mentioned a “Redfin knockoff” that had set up a booth at Inman’s Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco last week. I had a response in mind but Thomas Heimann from Bravo Brokers in Sarasota beat me to the punch. ?A Redfin knock-off bought a booth and sent five people to the show.? Harsh words ...
The Innovator?s Dilemma In Real Estate: Beware Of That Redfin Swimming Jus
2007-08-01 18:30:00 Redfin is the company everybody in the traditional real estate industry loves to hate. “They’ll go bankrupt just like all discount firms do when the market turns bad.” “Can you believe how they force listing agents to do all the work?” “Their agents don’t have a clue about the market!” Deride Redfin ...
Facebook, Dictionary.com, and Redfin In the News
2007-07-20 20:20:00 Facebook continues to be a force and has continued to do good things since the release of it's API's. An article looks at Facebook 2 months after the launch of their platform, TechCrunch suggests Facebook may be the next Microsoft, and of course, there is the lawsuit that just won't go away. With everyone guessing ...
Redfin and Real Estate Blogs: An Examination
2007-07-19 10:41:00 Sixteen years ago this fall, I was at Sun Devil Stadium when Arizona State’s football team beat the University of Arizona for the first time in nine years. Students (and alumni, such as myself) stormed the field. After wandering aimlessly, I went over to the stands in front of the band and had a friend lift ...
Redfin Goes On A $12M Spending Spree
2007-07-18 18:46:00 Fresh from a successful round of meetings with VC’s over on Sand Hill Road, Redfin just announced closing a successful fund-raising round of $12M, led by none other than Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The coverage of this event has been predictable: Techcruch claims that Redfin’s goal is to “completely remove real estate agents and brokers from ...
Redfin Secures Another $12M in Financing
2007-07-18 08:31:00 TechCrunch reports that Redfin has secured another $12M in financing. I'm sure this bothers some in our industry, others probably have no clue what a Redfin is. TechCrunch said of Redfin: "If you find a home you like and want to place an offer, Redfin will represent you in the buying process (they have a call center ... |
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