When selling, you get what you pay for.
I love the idea of Redfin. As the average urban home price creeps above half-a-million dollars, taking 6% from the seller is a crime. I'm all for agents getting what they're due, but the high commissions are contributing to a lot of oafishness in the industry and the end-customers wind up losing. In good conscience, I can't support an industry where the lousiest agent routinely makes more money annually than the best high school teacher in Seattle. Sorry, agent friends, that's what I think.
So, Redfin. I'm currently selling a house with them, and I'm unfortunately getting what I'm paying for. Like most other industries that rely on personal contact to service customers, Redfin is making the worst of their hands-off approach to listing. Where a 3% agent would be bending over backward to make sure that no balls are dropped, Redfin spreads each agent thinly over a wide number of listings and there are balls all over the floor.
What's worse is that Redfin tries to sell their services with the same front originated by the worst web-based charlatans. My agent described their company as one that 'enables buyers and sellers to discover properties', which is web-speak for "we don't do squat for you besides post your house on a website". They do more than that, obviously, but you get my drift.
Their actual offerings are waning with recent crackdowns from the local real estate mafia. They do hang your sign. They don't feature or market your house, though. The popular, informative blog they had is now pointless thanks to industry crackdown. It's going to be replaced by a forum (more self-service, customer community nonsense) that could fall prey to the same MLS revolt that doomed their blog. The sole marketing for a listing is their template-driven bulk postings to Craigslist.org every week or so. When you do need help, you queue up for agents' attention and, though usually prompt and always friendly, very seldom get real-time service. The dropped balls and templatized solutions to issues really shade out any benefit to their sales model.
A huge benefit to listing with a large company like Windermere is the inherent nepotism between listing and buyers' agents. Buyer agents have a wealth of listings to push on their clients, and I would question Windermere's sanity if they didn't secretly encourage agents to keep the deals within their holdings. Redfin's policy of 'encouraging discovery' blows holes in that immense benefit.
The question to ask yourself is this: Will your house sell itself? Redfin isn't going to sell it for you. They're not, it's not in their business model at all to do so. They might get to the point where they're smarter about what they're doing for their customers, but for now, listing a house on Redfin is a lot of work. It's cheap though, so there's a value proposition in play that will help or hurt you, depending on your work ethic.
The last thing that should be stated, in the completion of the 'caveat emptor' discussion, is that Redfin listings are actively shunned by agents from other companies. On top of the backlash following Redfin's endorsement in the local and national press, it's common knowledge that RF's growing pains and institutionalized poor service are costly to buyers' agents. The combination of the implicit boycott of Redfin's business model and Redfin's lackluster service make selling your home an increasingly difficult prospect. So much for the money you're saving?
Update since original posting: They screwed up another promise, and my house lost visibility on the MLS for another weekend. The fourth out of four weekends. I'm lowering my rating to 2 stars and adding this paragraph, and we're going to pull our house off RF and use a friend who works at Windermere to help. Get it together, Redfin!
Bottom Line: You get what you pay for. You're potentially saving tens of thousands of dollars, which can't be ignored. As far as a service, they do slightly better than the FSBO route, but their stated business model implies that the intent is to do as little as possible to market your home. Your money gets a listing, a sign, a mention on a go-nowhere blog, and a poorly-designed PDF flyer, nothing else. read more