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Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

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Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#231
I had a superb experience with them in 2012 despite being a nightmare customer. Chose Refin because their blog was so good. I bought a 2nd house in the same neighborhood. It started out odd because part of their onboarding is asking "Where do you want the check sent?", because, you know, you save so much using them. I knew it would be fake but whatever. (It wasn't--I did indeed get the $10K check almost immediately upon closing.) Problem is that my bank thought I was a terrorist, despite the fact that I have literally 12 accounts with them (several businesses, savings, checking, etc.). I put down 20% on an $890K loan. My income is closer to $800K than $500K and my other house in the neighborhood was already paid for. The simple act of moving the $200K into an account ready to write the check spooked the bank and they literally treated me like a terrorist. Suddenly everything took infinite amounts of time to handle and resulted in triple the usual paperwork. It was excruciating.

The bank (Bank of America, of course) caused so much trouble that I finally decided to pull out and lose my $20K earnest money. (I had chosen B of A on the theory that they already knew all about me, and also because they offered a killer ARM.) The mortgage officer literally quit his job over his bank's bungled handling of my sale. Somehow they came through, by this time, 3 months after I had made the offer. I was actually paying $100/day to the sellers because at this point they had moved out and were in a hotel and weren't able to close on their own new house.

Anyway, my agent at Redfin was a champ, even when I told her I was quitting. So she had way more trouble than a full-service agent with none of the upside. The whole thing on Redfin's side was precisely as advertised.

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#232

I hope this company sees nothing but success. I bought my house through Redfin last year, and not only did I save ~$5k in commissions compared to a conventional realtor, I also felt the process was much smoother and more pleasant than other times I've interacted with a conventional realtor. It's simply absurd that in an era where any buyer can view photos of a house for sale online real estate agents still expect to…

Let me offer a different viewpoint. Redfin absolutely serves a purpose, but in some markets, notably for my case very hot markets, it's a significant impediment. I really wanted redfin to work, shopping in seattle 2 years ago. I tried for almost a year, but they would consistently be not as contactable or prompt as we wanted, and gave us very erroneous advice when it came to crafting offers on some houses we wanted.…

Similar experience. They spend almost zero time analyzing, explaining pros and cons. Not once did they bid less than the asking price of the home. The tour agents just stand there while we tour. They answer a few questions passively. After a few attempts, they called and said they don't want to work with me anymore, because we took too many tours. About an year later, we went for a traditional buyer broker. He explained a lot of things about the home, negotiated hard, started a bid $15k below the asking price and finally got the home for about $6000 less even with 4 other bidders.

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#233
post #3

I'm still waiting for someone to completely eliminate the realtor and charge a reasonable flat fee ($1000?) to buy/sell a house and handle all the related details. Why do we need realtors at this point? Everyone finds houses themselves online nowadays. Why does anyone need to pay a whopper commission to some middle-man?

Redfin does more to move in that direction than other listing websites such as Trulia. Redfin is the actual broker on your side of the sale, and they take a smaller cut than most other brokers.

The reason it's not cheaper is that few brokers compete on price.

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#234

I hope this company sees nothing but success. I bought my house through Redfin last year, and not only did I save ~$5k in commissions compared to a conventional realtor, I also felt the process was much smoother and more pleasant than other times I've interacted with a conventional realtor. It's simply absurd that in an era where any buyer can view photos of a house for sale online real estate agents still expect to…

I think in a lot of cases realtors aren't the necessity they used to be, because of tools like Redfin. It used to be VERY hard (or near impossible?) to pull past sale data, comps, and various other bits of info on your own. As a buyer, a realtor is rarely a bad choice because they likely won't cost you any money, as they usually negotiate out of he seller's fees. They help out a ton when it comes to bidding, what we…

If your mom's house was also in Portland, I'm not that surprised by the outcome for the same reason that a house closing at 25% over doesn't seem that extraordinary: Portland's housing market is bonkers.

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#235

I'm closing literally today on a house I bought through Redfin. It's my third Redfin buying experience. Redfin for buying is great. Their website makes it easy to look for properties and get alerts when properties you might like go on the market. No need to pay a realtor to do that part. I'm still not using Redfin for selling. When you sell, you're paying for a salesman, and a salesman can make a big difference on ho…

Indeed. When I needed to sell a house in the East Bay, the Redfin agent wanted to list the property for almost 20% less than it sold for. When I told her that I thought she was pricing it too low, she looked at me like I was crazy. The local agent that we ended up using instead (who had recently sold 3-5 houses in our same neighborhood) had a much better idea of what the house was actually worth, and also paid to sta…

> The local agent that we ended up using instead ... also paid to stage the house--which Redfin would not have done.

You paid for that.

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently working on solving this problem, hoping to launch in the next year. The truth is the average real estate agent doesn't have a college degree and has been in the business for less than 3 years. And in a hot market, when houses sell in a week, the agent is worth even less. What marketing plan is going to sell a house in a week? None at market value.Furthermore, buyers are walking into transactions thinkin…

> What marketing plan is going to sell a house in a week? None at market value. Do not agree. Markets are only collections of people, and brokers know people, some of whom are buyers and a few of whom are the perfect buyers. Reaching those people is the marketing plan. Also, this is not buying airplane tickets, this is the single most costly and complicated process buyers and sellers will likely go through in their w…

"This is the single most costly and complicated process people will go through. .." so why hire someone for 5-7% of the purchase price, who doesn't have a college degree and has been in the industry for 3 years or less. Furthermore, notice the incentives if you're a buyer literally everyone in the transaction from real estate agent to mortgage broker wants the price to be as high as possible. The incentives all point toward increasing the house price. We're going to fix this. And hopefully help many in the process. I say all of this as a real estate broker and lawyer to boot.

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#237

I am actively looking the house right now. And getting disappointed by Redfin these days. Previously it showed listed price for sold properties but now it has gone. Only sold price is shown. Not only this, but the property disappeared from MLS then re-listed with higher price tag doesn't show previously listed price. Information should be transparent between seller and buyer but Redfin is leaning to seller side at th…

I don't think that's true. If you scroll down to the "Property History" section on any Redfin sold listing, you should see the full details for that home, including list price, any price adjustments, and sold price. In some markets, this information is only visible to logged-in users due to MLS restrictions, so you may have to log into your account to view the data.

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#238
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it would be a bit risky to buy/sell real estate without any outside help. My point was just that if you are already using a realtor, it shouldn't generally be necessary to also hire a lawyer.

How do you get a mortgage without a lawyer? Our bank required the lawyer to do the title search, title settlement, and title recording - according to my closing disclosure, which I just consulted.

Might be different in different areas. In places I've lived, the title company handles all of this - the seller doesn't hire a lawyer - a large title company likely has a corporate lawyer in case something comes up, but otherwise they have people whose job is it to do the search and put together the closing documents.

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. When I needed to sell a house in the East Bay, the Redfin agent wanted to list the property for almost 20% less than it sold for. When I told her that I thought she was pricing it too low, she looked at me like I was crazy. The local agent that we ended up using instead (who had recently sold 3-5 houses in our same neighborhood) had a much better idea of what the house was actually worth, and also paid to sta…

> The local agent that we ended up using instead ... also paid to stage the house--which Redfin would not have done. You paid for that.

Semantic quibbling. GP paid their agent (presumably) 3%, which included staging. Redfin charges 1%, which doesn't include staging.

(exact numbers might vary based on locale, these are Seattle numbers)

Re: Real estate site Redfin files for IPO

#240
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why buyer's agents are paid on sale-price-commission is Once again buyer's agents are a large part of the equation. They have to drive around the actual buyers and waste time showing properties with nothing to show for it often. So the way it works is the people who actually buy (or sell) make more money to compensate for people that do not buy.

But a sales price commission, of all possible completion-based pay structures, makes the interest of the agent misaligned with (opposed to, in some respect) that of the principal.

Have you read Freakanomics? They find that agents are more interested in closing add getting paid rather than the extra couple hundred dollars of commission a $10000 swing in price gets them. I'd gladly fight to save a buyer I represent $10000 on price even if it "costs" me $200-$300 of less commission.
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