Adorn that russet Bloodhound in Redfin red: Today we make common cause against stupidity, cupidity, stolidity and inertia in the real estate industry in behalf of the consumer’s right to a fully-informed, financially-sound and fun real estate experience.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Redfin.com is coming to Phoenix today — 6 am PDT, to be precise. And they’re coming as a VOW, which strikes me as being a potent marketing advantage, at least in the short run. And the news that might be most of interest here: BloodhoundRealty.com is coming along with them.

As I wrote in February of 2009, Redfin is entering new markets with referral agents as well as its own employees. Cathleen Collins, my wife and business partner, and I will be handling one quadrant of the referred territories.

From Redfin.com’s press release:

Redfin today expanded to the Phoenix metropolitan area, increasing the number of listings available on Redfin’s website by 8%. Phoenix is the third market Redfin has opened since December 2009, and the twelfth overall. Separately today, Redfin is announcing upgrades to its listing service, and new support for short sales.

With this launch, Redfin’s site offers customers the photos and marketing materials used to list properties that recently sold, information previously limited to real estate agents. No other website offers this data, known in the industry as Virtual Office Website (VOW) data, to Phoenix consumers. The new data, which consumers can use to develop their own market analyses, became available last year as a result of an agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors.

Redfin has access to the real-time database used by brokers to list homes because Redfin is a broker that represents customers buying and selling homes. In Cave Creek, Fountain Hills, Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler and Gilbert, the company provides direct service, employing its own real estate agents. In the East Valley and the West Valley, Redfin relies on partners. Redfin’s search site covers all of Maricopa and Pinal counties.

Cathleen wants the business. We’re growing fast, and she wants to grow still faster.

Greg wants to be an even-more-disruptive disruptor.

But among many other things I might talk about, there is this: Redfin’s internal praxis actually does impose a performance bar on practitioners. It’s the kind of corporate pencil-pushing I’ve always been lousy at, but Redfin tracks and measures everything. Not for pencil-pushing reasons, but in order to improve the product in every measurable way. That’s beyond impressive to me. I haven’t even had a chance to play with their toys yet, but I’ve learned a ton just hearing them described.

And this is a real Bloodhound experience, which is very funny to me, considering how much grief I’ve given Redfin.com and its CEO, Glenn Kelman, over the years. But the path to Splendor necessarily originates in error, and the Bloodhound way is to learn from your mistakes and do better in the future. So: I am deeply impressed by Redfin’s focus on the consumer’s complete real estate experience and by how much effort the entire company devotes to improving that experience over time. That is raising the frolicking bar, and I am very proud to be a part of that — even if just an ancillary part.

I hate, hate, hate every aspect of the real estate business that deserves to be called predatory. We are doing a beautiful and noble thing — making and keeping promises in order to help honest, hard-working people realize the fundamentally human dreams of hearth and home, kith and kin. And yet everywhere I turn, I see yet another huckster trying to sucker a consumer — presumed to be clueless — into making a poor choice just so the huckster can get paid. I am doing everything I can think of to push those bums out of this business, and I anticipate that Redfin’s presence in the Phoenix market will be a potent force for the good.

Oh, good grief! Who doesn’t paint himself on the side of the angels? Here’s what matters right away: Consumers in Phoenix will have a lot more real estate information available to them, all on-line, all anonymously if they like. If they undertake a transaction, they’ll learn a lot, have some fun and save a little money. But even if all they do is window shop, they’ll know more tomorrow than they could have learned today. If some huckster tries to tell you that’s a bad thing — run.

Meanwhile: Welcome to Phoenix, Redfin. I’m looking forward to learning more of the art of doing a better job, and Cathleen and I are eager to show off the regal, indomitable arrogance of a healthy, normal Bloodhound.

This is my kind of fun…