Redfin mingles MLS-listed homes with FSBOs, foreclosures
Web site displays addresses of bank-owned properties
By Inman News, Thursday, May 1, 2008.Bookmarking Sites
Seattle-based real estate brokerage company Redfin has integrated foreclosure properties and for-sale-by-owner properties with its map-based search, and the company identifies the various property types with different icon colors and in detailed descriptions.
While some multiple listing services prevent this so-called "co-mingling," or side-by-side display of multiple listing service data with other data sources in property searches, Redfin officials say they believe their added search capability is compliant with MLS rules.
Salt Lake City's BlueRoof.com brokerage company, Southern California-based Catalist Homes, and Boston-based CondoDomain.com have earlier offered the ability to search for FSBO properties.
Redfin spokeswoman Cynthia Pang said the company did take a close look at MLS rules. MLS officials advised the company that there was not a problem with displaying the various types of properties together as long as the properties are clearly defined as FSBO or MLS-listed properties, she said.
"We're using different colored icons, we're saying very clearly where the listing is from," Pang said.
And Redfin identifies instances in which a property that is listed in the MLS also is listed for sale by the owner.
"Consumers' first question of any real estate site is whether it shows all the homes for sale," said Michael Young, Redfin's chief technology officer, in a statement.
The addition of the for-sale foreclosed and FSBO homes at the Redfin site has increased the total properties at the site by about 5 percent, according to the company announcement.
Redfin, which offers deep commission rebates to buyers who work with its agents, has also added the ability for consumers to search for open houses, and allows users to request e-mail or RSS notices about upcoming open houses. Users can also choose to receive updates on selected homes, such as a change in price or status.
The company also added square-footage data from the Combined Los Angeles Westside MLS, remodeled its interface for retrieving records related to past home sales and improved its integration with MLSs in Boston and Southern California.
The FSBO property data is supplied by a group of about 50 FSBO Web sites, Redfin reported, including ForSaleByOwner.com, ForSaleByOwnerCenter.com, FSBOSellBuy.com and HomesByOwner.com.
Redfin's foreclosure data features bank-owned properties that have been foreclosed, repurchased by banks and offered up for sale. The company displays addresses for these properties and contact information for the bank when the properties are sold directly by the bank. Some foreclosure data providers do not supply address information free of charge for foreclosure properties.
Redfin does not display foreclosure properties that are scheduled to be sold at auction, and the company announced that it has no plans to support buyers who purchase homes at auctions.
Pang said the company's agents do not have any expertise in auction sales. "It is something we will look into but we haven't yet," she said.
Redfin officials also announced Wednesday that the company has plans to work under a different compensation structure with buyers of FSBO properties and bank-owned or REO (real estate-owned) that are sold directly by the bank. Buyers of these properties would pay Redfin a flat fee and would not receive a rebate in the purchase transaction under the announced plans.
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Submitted by Sean OToole on May 1, 2008 - 9:07am.
With REO resales now representing 33% of the market, and buyer perception that foreclosures are bargains, Redfin is very smart to highlight these properties. Yet this isn't that groundbreaking - many MLS's now allow agents to tag properties as bank owned, so adding this functionality takes little more than picking up the MLS flag to display a different icon on the map.
Still there are a couple of problems with this approach - for one it shows a small fraction of the total foreclosure activity. Defaults are currently at record levels. And agents don't always identify their bank owned properties as such (though some MLSs are now moving to require it).
By leaving out the preforeclosure and auction properties it does not resolve the buyer perception that to get a real deal they need to cut out the Realtor and instead pay $49.95 a month to one of the get-rich-quick, save 50% on your next house without a Realtor, foreclosure information services that advertise so aggressively on the real estate portals.
Preforeclosure and upcoming auction properties are little different then FSBO's - they both represent someone who needs to sell, one by necessity the other by choice. And there is nothing to say the preforeclosure owner can't be approached directly just like a FSBO.
Further those homes will have a significant impact on the market. With two thirds of properties that enter foreclosure ending up bank owned, you can think of them as "Coming Soon" riders. Buyers should have that information when writing an offer, and sellers should have it when pricing their home.
Michael Young was dead on when he said consumers want to see ALL market activity. I applaud their step in that direction and look forward to the day that they complete that mission. The real estate portals have figured this out and are generating ad revenue sending consumers off to fend for themselves for $49.95/mo - shouldn't Realtors be engaging that consumer instead?
Sean O'Toole
Founder / CEO
ForeclosureRadar.com
Submitted by Lenore & Alex Wilkas on May 1, 2008 - 10:02am.
If only my MLS would or could be as cutting edge on this as Redfin. Living in, and working in the Silicon Valley, one would think that the MLS's representing Realtors here would be cutting edge on this stuff, but no, the Luddites they are, lag in offering us tools to help ourselves and our clients. I find it a royal pain searching for the data concerning a short sale. We have a rule in our MLS that the listing must state whether it is a short sale yet countless numbers of listings avoid saying this in agent comments.
What I want is an opportunity to run a search either including short sales or excluding them; including bank owned or excluding them. What is so hard about writing code for this? Especially when the boards went and designed and wrote the code for their own sites rather than going out of the box and customizing.
We are only as good as our tools and our tools in my MLS are no way as good as Redfin or many of the other real estate sites out there. We don't have a huge number of short sales in our local markets but there are those interested in them and likewise for bank owned properties. FISBO's? I don't see many of those here either. I love the mapping that Refin has done. It's very slick, but I sure don't want to lose clients to Redfin because of this!
Lenore Wilkas
Prudential CA Fine Homes International
Read Our Blog @ www.SanMateoRealEstateNews.com
Submitted by Vito Boscaino www.ServingColumbus.com on May 1, 2008 - 11:38am.
I second the comments offered by Lenore Wilkas.
Here in Columbus, the MLS just rolled out their "new" MLS system. What a joke. It's slower, more cumbersome, is not intuitive and feels like something that was put together in 1980. With all the web 2.0 technology that exists today, how hard can it be to simply provide a check-off box to identify "Short-Sale" or "Bank Owned" as information fields? Why have to rely on agents voluntarily describing ownership status especially when a property is in transition?
I applaud companies like Redfin and Trulia for being creative and constantly working to improve the consumer user interface with their sites. Firms like these are changing the game, for the better.
When I see a local MLS, like the Columbus Board of Realtors, roll out an unmitigated disaster of an MLS capability like they have with the current Tempo system, and then try to convince us about what a great tool it is, I just have to laugh.
These guys are cooked and they don't even know it yet. Bring on technological change. Let's celebrate creative thinking and risk takers who push the technological envelope. This industry needs so much more change and it cannot happen fast enough.
Go Redfin, Go!
Submitted by mark langowski on May 1, 2008 - 1:56pm.
Go to www.BeatYouThere.com, the true innovators of this mingling idea. Our public launch is coming any day now. We have listings from realtors, pre-foreclosures, bank owned, fsbo, auctions and classified listings.
All in one easy to use search engine.
Submitted by Jake Fackrell on May 1, 2008 - 4:37pm.
Redfin is attempting to do the right thing by creating a marketplace that contains all available residential real estate. It sounds like Redfin has the consumer in mind by offering a much broader selection of available real estate than what is in the MLS. More companies need to do the same. Of course, this is just one step to completing the task of putting all available real estate in one location.
As Mr. O'Toole mentioned in his comment pre-foreclosures and auctions are missing. Also, I estimate that the FSBO websites mentioned in the article that are providing the FSBO data contain only about 15% of the nationwide FSBO market. The FSBO property owners who don't list their home on one of these sites will usually place an ad in their local paper. FSBO Leader researches newspapers throughout the country to find nearly every FSBO property.
I hope that companies like Redfin will continue to make shopping for online real estate a better overall experience.
Submitted by Brett Young on May 1, 2008 - 7:32pm.
Great move by Redfin. They continue to empower the end-user by giving them what they want most--the easiest and most efficient way to comprehensively search for homes.
Brett Young
High Ground Realty
New Paltz Real Estate
"A Higher Standard of Service"