Redfin is bringing its iBuyer platform RedfinNow to Houston, joining a crowded iBuyer market that already has offerings from Zillow, Opendoor and Offerpad.
RedfinNow, like other iBuyers, gives homeowners the certainty of an all-cash offer and the convenience of a flexible move-out date and a sale without any prep work, showings or open houses.
“RedfinNow makes home-selling simple so you can focus on what’s next in your life,” Kari Ledgerwood, the Houston market manager for RedfinNow, said in a statement. “Skip the repairs, showings, and uncertainty of a traditional home sale and move on your timeline,”
“Sellers love the convenience and certainty of an instant offer, and the service is especially popular with our move-up buyers who are able to use the cash from their current home to buy their next,” Ledgerwood added.
The platform charges the seller a fee of 7 percent of the offer price, which is more than the typical market listing route of 3 percent for the buyers’ agent and 3 percent for the listing agent. It’s even more than Redfin’s Houston offering, a market in which Redfin offers a full-service 1 percent listing fee.
In February, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman noted most buyers bypassed RedfinNow in favor of its full-service listing program, saying it’s “tricky business” figuring out an offer price that benefits both Redfin and the seller.
For qualifying homes within the company’s buy-box, homeowners can receive an offer in 48 hours or less and complete a sale in as few as seven days. Redfin then makes any necessary repairs before listing it on the market while offering on-demand, self-tours seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“With our brokerage and RedfinNow, we make it easy for sellers to compare what they could get for their home right now to what they could get listing on the open market with a Redfin agent,” Jason Aleem, head of real estate operations for RedfinNow, said in a statement. “Redfin empowers sellers with the choice and transparency to decide what works best for their situation.”
The move into Houston is the third RedfinNow market in Texas added this summer. The platform previously expanded to San Antonio and Austin and already was live in Dallas.
Zillow Offers, a top competitor of RedfinNow, expanded its Texas-presence, with new offerings in San Antonio and Austin, earlier this week.
Houston is a crowded iBuyer market, which has seen significant traction for the direct-to-consumer home buying and selling platforms in the past couple of years. In 2016, there were no sales to iBuyers in Houston and in 2017, there were just two. There have been dozens in 2019 through the first six months of the year, according to data from Remaine and Mike DelPrete.
