Redfin

[Anonymous]

Obviously the website is excellent, but do you recommend working with one of their agents or going a more traditional route? Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

I haven't used them. I have to admit I don't really understand their financials. They give you a portion of the commission they earn? How can they afford to do that? What are you missing out on as a result?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't used them. I have to admit I don't really understand their financials. They give you a portion of the commission they earn? How can they afford to do that? What are you missing out on as a result?

They basically want you to come to them once you've narrowed your list down. Then you can get a piece of the pie. I just told my realtor I wanted 1% and he agreed.

[Anonymous]

I should clarify, I picked a realtor that was not Redfin and asked for 1%.

[Anonymous]

I think Redfin is the wave of the future. Sure, there are still some older and/or more traditional folks who like being carted around by an agent to house after house. But most of us these days prefer doing a lot of the work ourselves scouting out stuff online. You're already doing it, so why not take advantage of that and get a cut of the money for doing some of the work? My two cents.

[Anonymous]

We used Redfin 4 years ago to buy our house and it worked well for us. I would not have been content with letting a realtor find houses for me; I wanted to be searching nearly as I new exactly what we wanted. Given all the work I was doing that I didn't need a realtor to do, and that all I really needed an agent for was to unlock the door to show me a house, Redfin was a good choice for us. But if you need more hand holding, or more full service, or didn't have time to search yourself, they would not be the best choice.

I also liked that the buyers agents don't get paid based in how much you spend. I always feel like its a conflict of interest for buyers agens to take a percentage of your sale price, because it gives them no incentive to negotiate in your favor.

[Anonymous]

We used Redfin too. I was happy to search for houses on my own, and then they handled all of the paperwork, etc. They were very low pressure and helped us wade through a complicated foreclosure purchase. I was really happy with them. Also, there is a set commission, and you "get" half of it.

[Anonymous]

We used one for buying and selling.

The buyers agent was fine. Nice guy, responsive. We didn't need tons of help with pricing or bidding strategies, and I'm not sure I'd have tons of confidence in him if we had. We also didn't need much help w/r/t finding listings. I thought his recommended inspector was just ok; nothing major has come up, but a few minor things have and he didn't seem as thorough as the person we used previously.

We cancelled our contract with the Redfin sellers agent after two weeks. He was nice and responsive, but we lived in a hot neighborhood of row houses (so there's not a ton of differentiation between the houses) and our house was just not moving (most, if priced right, sold within a weekend). We priced at the agent's recommendation, and let him know that we were willing to price aggressively in order to sell quickly, so it wasn't the price. We also did a ton of work prepping the house, which was recently renovated anyway, and there weren't any recommendations that we didn't implement. I don't know what it was, but w/ Redfin, we just weren't getting showings and the one offer we got fell through. The agent also didn't see the offer when it came in, so we responded late.

After canceling Redfin, we went with a realtor that had sold a lot of houses in our neighborhood, and a couple within a few weeks of ours. He sold it the weekend of Hurrican Sandy for just above list price (which was slightly less than what we listed w/ Redfin, because the agent felt we needed to reduce in order to generate new interest. But he said that if he'd come in at the beginning, the Redfin price seemed right). We also got multiple offers.

(Btw, I've posted this before, so if you see this come up in an old thread, it's probably my post, not another Redfin consumer.)

[Anonymous]

We bought with redfin in July 2011 and had a great experience. We used Russell chandler and he did a great job negotiating for us and saved us a lot of money. We also did not feel pressured the way we did when we worked with a traditional agent. The redfin agents are salaried, so there's no incentive for them if you pay a higher price. We got 1.5% of the purchase price in a check at closing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We used one for buying and selling.

The buyers agent was fine. Nice guy, responsive. We didn't need tons of help with pricing or bidding strategies, and I'm not sure I'd have tons of confidence in him if we had. We also didn't need much help w/r/t finding listings. I thought his recommended inspector was just ok; nothing major has come up, but a few minor things have and he didn't seem as thorough as the person we used previously.

We cancelled our contract with the Redfin sellers agent after two weeks. He was nice and responsive, but we lived in a hot neighborhood of row houses (so there's not a ton of differentiation between the houses) and our house was just not moving (most, if priced right, sold within a weekend). We priced at the agent's recommendation, and let him know that we were willing to price aggressively in order to sell quickly, so it wasn't the price. We also did a ton of work prepping the house, which was recently renovated anyway, and there weren't any recommendations that we didn't implement. I don't know what it was, but w/ Redfin, we just weren't getting showings and the one offer we got fell through. The agent also didn't see the offer when it came in, so we responded late.

After canceling Redfin, we went with a realtor that had sold a lot of houses in our neighborhood, and a couple within a few weeks of ours. He sold it the weekend of Hurrican Sandy for just above list price (which was slightly less than what we listed w/ Redfin, because the agent felt we needed to reduce in order to generate new interest. But he said that if he'd come in at the beginning, the Redfin price seemed right). We also got multiple offers.

(Btw, I've posted this before, so if you see this come up in an old thread, it's probably my post, not another Redfin consumer.)

My guess is that a lot of realtors 'blacklist' redfin listings and dont show them to clients because they hate the model. The concept of a realtor has gone by way of the dodo bird frankly. There was a time when you NEEDED a realtor because only realtors knew what was on the market. Thats changed dramatically. The value add of a realtor now is much much lower.

[Anonymous]

The market in NoVA and DC is so tight with no inventory and blind offers on the 1st or second day of the listing, etc., if you are looking there no way would I go without a really good agent. Forgoing the cash back is worth landing a house in 3 months that you really like.

[Anonymous]

We used RedFin, super easy and got money back. Lawyers can also claim the buyside fee and rebate it all back to you if you want.
Their business model is based on transparency and volume. If you think about it, the traditional 6% fee U.S. realtor market is cannibalizing itself. Think about how many people would like to sell right now if they weren't staring at a 6% fee!!!

[Anonymous]

I've heard some selling agents won't consider offers from Redfin. That would be my concern -- putting myself at a disadvantage when making an offer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've heard some selling agents won't consider offers from Redfin. That would be my concern -- putting myself at a disadvantage when making an offer.

Not anymore, we used a different local redfin like company that have an even bigger rebate without issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The market in NoVA and DC is so tight with no inventory and blind offers on the 1st or second day of the listing, etc., if you are looking there no way would I go without a really good agent. Forgoing the cash back is worth landing a house in 3 months that you really like.

It's this way in close-in MD, too. When we were looking a few months ago, there were maybe 1-2 viable houses on the market, and even if not viable, they were going off the market in a few days. There is no way we would have gotten our house without the hard work and insight of our realtor. She also steered us away from houses that we were ready to settle on (out of house hunting exhaustion).