{"id":2553,"date":"2008-01-30T22:01:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-31T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2553"},"modified":"2008-01-31T11:23:34","modified_gmt":"2008-01-31T18:23:34","slug":"big-news-ignore-all-that-fine-print-tear-through-all-that-red-tape-redfincom-supports-safari-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2553\/big-news-ignore-all-that-fine-print-tear-through-all-that-red-tape-redfincom-supports-safari-at-last\/","title":{"rendered":"Big News: Ignore all that fine print, tear through all that red tape — Redfin.com supports Safari at last!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, wait, that’s not the big news from Redfin.com<\/a>. In fact, I reported the really big news last night<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Redfin will either make money or it won’t, and, in the long run, if it endures into a long run, it will become more like traditional real estate even as traditional real estate becomes more like Redfin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So here’s what’s changed, as of 12:01 am EST: Redfin agents are going to squire buyers around for free four times as much as they have in the past. No news on who’s buying lunch.<\/p>\n

Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today rolled out a 75-day trial of a new home-tours policy that allows visitors to its site to arrange four Redfin-hosted home tours without paying any money up-front or making any commitment to Redfin. The first two tours would be free, and the third and fourth tours would cost $250 at closing, with any subsequent tours costing $250 in advance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? My experience is that home-buyers are not the most assiduous readers of fine print.<\/p>\n

There’s more:<\/p>\n

The new tours last two hours, and require the buyer to provide a mortgage pre-approval letter documenting her ability to buy the homes she is scheduled to visit. Redfin deducts the $250 charges for the third and fourth tours from the commission refund, which has averaged roughly $10,000 at closing. Customers who do not complete a purchase with Redfin do not pay for their third and fourth tours. Previously, Redfin only provided one free three-hour home tour, charging $250 in advance for each additional tour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m thinking there can be too much red tape even for the INTx gnomes who find Redfin appealing. What is clear is that pay-as-you-go has a less-than-ideal gnome appeal.<\/p>\n

I can do four houses an hour with normal buyers. I normally do 12 houses in three hours, then make the buyers stop. After 12 houses, their eyes glaze over. If we limited ourselves to two hours, that would be eight houses. Four two-hour tours would be 32 houses. This is nothing at all like the original Redfin game plan — shoving the expense of showing homes onto <\/a>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, wait, that’s not the big news from Redfin.com. In fact, I reported the really big news last night: Redfin will either make money or it won’t, and, in the long run, if it endures into a long run, it will become more like traditional real estate even as traditional real estate becomes more like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,6,5,27,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-disintermediation","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-redfincom","10":"category-technology","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2917,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2917\/redfincom-wakes-up-smells-coffee-staples-galoshes-to-forehead-now-redfin-buyers-will-be-able-to-see-homes-in-an-almost-normal-way\/","url_meta":{"origin":2553,"position":0},"title":"Redfin.com wakes up, smells coffee, staples galoshes to forehead: Now Redfin buyers will be able to see homes in an almost-normal way","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The uncontested brilliance of the free market is that it is self-correcting. People like me have been bitching all along that Redfin.com's approach to buyer representation was misguided if not outright evil. Conceding some huge chunk of the buyer's agent's commission to the buyer was certainly consumer-friendly, but pushing the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2701,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2701\/redfincom-builds-new-listing-oversight-tools-for-sellers\/","url_meta":{"origin":2553,"position":1},"title":"Redfin.com builds new listing oversight tools for sellers","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the news, snipped to the quick:Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today released Redfin Listing Metrics, a dashboard for Redfin's listing customers to analyze neighborhood inventory trends and recent sales, and to compare their listing's online traffic to that of other listings in the neighborhood.That sounds slick, doesn't it?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1671,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1671\/redfin-cops-another-12-million-raising-investors-stake-in-the-discount-realtybot-to-40000-per-closed-transaction\/","url_meta":{"origin":2553,"position":2},"title":"Redfin cops another $12 million, raising investors’ stake in the discount realty.bot to $40,000 per closed transaction","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The indefatigable John Cook:Redfin has raised an additional $12 million in venture funding, money that the Seattle discount real estate broker will use to enhance its Web site and expand into new markets. First up for Redfin are the Washington D.C and Baltimore areas, which are being unveiled today. Next\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12308,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/12308\/should-redfin-be-renamed-right-fin\/","url_meta":{"origin":2553,"position":3},"title":"Should Redfin Be Renamed Right-Fin ?","author":"Brian Brady","date":"June 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A La Jolla real estate broker noticed an article on Gawker.com, about a listing Redfin published, offering a currently occupied home (that isn't for sale).\u00a0 From Coastal Real Estate Stars: A new listing appeared on Redfin this weekend\u2026.1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! Now, in fairness to the Redfin folks, garbage in= garbage\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1438,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1438\/not-to-be-missed-marlow-the-hammer-harris-on-the-redfin-hustle\/","url_meta":{"origin":2553,"position":4},"title":"Not to be missed: Marlow (The Hammer) Harris on the Redfin hustle","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Eminently worth waiting for:I\u2019d love to be a fly on the wall at those meetings with the investors and venture capitalists. Pie charts, graphs, facts, figures. Lots of talk about disintermediation and volume of scale and that sort of thing. When Redfin fails, they won\u2019t blame themselves, the business model,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10658,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10658\/whos-afraid-of-redfincom\/","url_meta":{"origin":2553,"position":5},"title":"Who’s Afraid of Redfin.com?","author":"Brian Brady","date":"December 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Bob Haywood, an Owasso, OK real estate agent makes a case for why you should be aware of Redfin.com.\u00a0 Bob articulates, from behind the cloaked wall on Active Rain, why Redfin.com is the REAL agent of change in the real estate industry.\u00a0 Read what Bob has to say: You should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}