The Rebirth of Redfin? October 20, 2005
In response to my recent slew of posts on real estate search engines, a reader (Amy Wu) left a comment asking if I’d ever tried Redfin. I’ve definitely tried Redfin and at one point I was a huge fan of their site. As a matter of fact, way back in March (before the days of plentiful google map-hacks), I mentioned how great it is to be able to get a birds-eye view of properties using Redfin. By the way, that was only my 3rd post for Rain City Guide (RCG)!
However, around June, RCG had a falling out with Redfin when they changed their business model to directly compete with Real Estate agents. One of the more interesting outcomes of my June post is that a former employee of Redfin wrote a long comment detailing some of his negative experiences while working at Redfin. After posting the comment, he asked that I delete it after David Ecker (founder and CEO of Redfin) wrote to him threatening a lawsuit.
However, I’m always willing to give people a second chance, so based on the Amy’s prompt, I decided to revisit Redfin. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they no longer mention the service I objected to. Go Redfin! I’m not sure if my posting had anything to do with the elimination of that poorly thought-out service, but either way, I’m pleased to see that they no longer advertise that service on their site.
So, in honor of my complete re-look at Redfin, I thought I’d compare them in the same method that I’ve been comparing sites like Trulia and Home Pages?
The Great:
- Neighborhood Focus: Their interface makes it extremely easy to focus on local neighborhoods
- Agent Integration: Their business model includes an easy way for agents to sign up and take part in their success!
The Good:
- Stability: Their flash maps are much more stable than Home Pages (especially on a Mac)
- Real Estate Data: Up-to-date date of homes-for-sale and sold-home
- Personalized Mapping: Their maps are quick and don’t rely on another company’s service!
- They’re Local: They serve (and only serve) the Seattle area (King County to be specific)
The bad:
- They’re Local: They serve (and only serve) the Seattle area. I know from my stats that many of my readers are from other parts of the country/world, and Redfin simply will not help you at all!
- Porting to other areas: I’ve heard for quite a while that Redfin was thinking of expanding to other areas, but their web-backend is apparently too complex to easily add to new areas. Having worked extensively with spatial data (GIS) for many years, I’m would not be surprised to hear that they are having problems adding new cities, but it is definitely disappointing. Along those lines, a service like Home Pages that relies on more generic neighborhood data (like school district data available from the Census District) has a much easier time going national!
The Ugly:
-
Arrogance: When I talk with people from Trulia and LTD, I get a sense of excitement from the developers and a real sense that they want to hear how they can better serve their target market. The people at Redfin rarely return emails, and really don’t seem interested in hearing suggestions. I get the impression that they are sure they know the best way to serve the industry…
Regardless of their business politics, Redfin offers some pretty darn good real estate mapping features. If you are looking for a home in King County (Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue, etc.), I would definitely recommend checking them out! But when looking toward the future of real estate search, I just don’t see much excitement happening at Redfin, so unless there is a major change in their direction, I doubt they will still seem like an interesting real estate search one year from now (let alone 5 years!).
Check out these related posts:
- Better Late than Never
- The State of Real Estate Search
- John Cook Interviews Redfin CEO: Redfin is “crazy-good”
Article Tags>> gHomes | Mapping | MLS | Real Estate Search | Redfin | Trulia | Zillow
- Posted in : General Real Estate
- Author : Dustin
Comments»
[...] l Estate? Discussion of the possibility of Google to show real estate listings. (Oct 20) The Rebirth of RedfinAnalysis of Redfin’s home search tool. (Oct 19) Better Late than NeverAnalysis of [...]
[...] Up to this point, Dustin has been under the impression that Redfin is very insular (He’s even gone so far as to say “arrogant”). I get the impression that Redfin has some interesting technologies, but they are still looking for their path; John Cook is doing a big marketing push on a site that has only had cosmetic changes (to real estate buyers) in the last year. Throughout the interview he raves about his site. I think he says exciting ten times and “crazy-happy” or “crazy-love” at least three times. If you check Redfin.com, their news bar clearly shows that they’re on a marketing push (it also shows they still don’t have an interface person who can tell them to use that valuable space more effectively). [...]
[...] They’re a little more “threatening”, but I’d have to say its because of their historical hostility to real estate agents rather than their current business model. [...]
[...] Redfin’s main complaint seems to be how “unfair” the whole system is, how they’ve been “threatened” and how they’ve met resistance from other agents. Let’s see……Kelman’s been quoted in dozens of articles, websites and press releases about how he’s going to “disrupt” the real estate industry and disintermediate the agent, and then they complain that they’ve met with some resistance from the very people they’re threatening. Hmmm…. It could also be because of their historical hostility to real estate agents rather than their current business model. Or maybe it’s just personal. Could this be the future of the real estate industry? [...]