I actually have a draft blog post I’ve been sitting on for 6 months titled “What We Need To Learn From Redfin”. Thanks for putting it out there.

I believe they have the very best real estate search portal in the country. Whenever we need to look up listing data, we go straight to Redfin.com.

I’m not knowledgeable enough in the brokerage system to say whether or not they will succeed as a brokerage, profit, or be big enough to make back the investment. I do know that if they can find a way to profit from traffic on their site, and if they can continue to grow using MLS data feeds, they have something big on their hands.

First I learned there are two Redfin agents for San Diego, although one covers San Diego and Orange County and the other covers San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles. One has 46 transactions listed last year while the other has 61. That is a lot of territory!

My hats off to these agents how I hope are driving an economical car – that is a huge amount of business for any one agent to do. I don’t know how any one agent can this much business and not cut some corners.

Checking out the feedback or review portion of one of the agents there were 87 reviews over the past three years. 17 were no response, 31 with no public comments shown, and the rest had reviews.

The majority of the comments were very positive, I think the consumer with the “money back” attitude is going to justify there decision with the experience.

“Overall with the money we will be receiving back from Redfin, it was definitely a positive experience, just quite a bit more work and time than using a personal agent.”

Another comment regarding Refin and there agents ability to negociate the transaction….

“When something in my price range comes up it goes fast and it takes speed and aggression. I don’t feel like I can move quickly with redfin and I don’t feel like there is much motivation for the agents to be aggressive.”

Finally….

” must say the touring process was terrible. In this market, having to wait days to schedule a tour to see some bank owned homes that can get snatched up quickly was definitely a pain. I was to the point of scheduling tours ahead of time and changing the homes to be seen before the weekend. Really you just need more staff on hand to do the tours so that people are able to see homes same day. Your field agents are not really doing more than opening doors for you, so it doesnt seem necessary to have experienced real estate people to do this.”

For instance, a free website is definitely not going to perform on the same level as a paid one. Consumers also will associate “free” with certain services and have a bad connotation with those services. If you’re providing services for free like “Real Estate advertising” or “listings” people will most likely think they are discounted when in reality they are not.

Redfin may be a discount website but I’ll bet the public view is of a higher quality service than a much nicer Brokerage that may not charger for certain services and only charges for the commission in the end.

The problem lies in the consumer’s perception. They perceive the end cost and only associate it with the transaction and nothing else. None of the leg work that goes into the deal is ever associated with the money so the consumer actually feels ripped off 9 times out of 10.

Something to think about when we discuss the new models being introduced into the RE game.

-Tyler