Redfin Launches Online Home-Selling Service

By Vivek Puri | September 7th, 2006 at 02:30 am ET         

Redfin, the online real estate broker launched the industry’s first online home-selling service. Redfin, headed by Glenn Kelman, is a Seattle and San Francisco real estate services web site. Earlier this year, Redfin had raised $8 million in Series B round of funding from Vulcan Capital, BEV Capital, The Hillman Co., and Madrona Venture Group. Redfin had raised $755,000 in Series A round of funding from Madrona Venture Group.

You can use Redfin Direct to list your property in the multiple listing service (MLS) for $2,000. From there on local, experienced Redfin agents represent you in negotiations and closing.

For a home priced at $500,000 you will have to pay the $2000, saving over $10000. Some other charges that might incur are for getting the home ready for the sale, which has to managed by the seller.

Similar is the case for home tours and open houses, which will have to be hosted by the seller himself. Redfin also provides 100% money back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the service. People looking to save more money by having Redfin as both the seller’s and buyer’s agent will be disappointed ’cause at Redfin, the same agent cannot represent both sides of a transaction.

The new version of Redfin.com also lets the buyers submit questions about a property to sellers and listing agents. You can also perform neighborhood search by zooming into a particular area. Redfin also lets viewers track multiple properties in a tabbed interface for easy navigation between listings and the map. As in Zillow, users can get previous sales price for properties.

Redfin is a well-executed site with a strong business proposition. As compared Yahoo Real Estate which was released late last month, Redfin has more comprehensive feature set, with the only disadvantage being that it’s only focused to Seattle and San Francisco right now.

Links:
Redfin

Tags: StartupSquad, redfin, realestate, web2.0, web_2.0, zillow