Starting Friday, homesellers in Minneapolis and St. Paul have another iBuyer to consider: RedfinNow.
Jason Aleem
“Even though it’s a seller’s market, homeowners can still find themselves stressing about the listing process, especially if they are simultaneously shopping for their next home,” RedfinNow Vice President Jason Aleem said in a prepared statement.
“RedfinNow is the simplest way for homeowners to sell, eliminating some of the challenges that come with moving and giving them more freedom to do so on their own timeline.”
With RedfinNow, homesellers can request an all-cash offer after providing their address and basic property details. Using its proprietary machine-learning algorithm, Redfin provides an offer that reflects local market trends, the home’s condition and the cost of any needed repairs.
After accepting an offer, sellers can close in as soon as 10 days. From there, Redfin will make the necessary repairs and list the home on the open market, where buyers can use the Redfin app to access Redfin-owned homes with or without an agent from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time.
“There’s no such thing as a one size fits all consumer, which is why it’s so important that we offer Minnesota homeowners a variety of selling options to meet their needs,” Minneapolis market manager Chris Prescott added in the same statement.
“While many sellers will still choose to work with their Redfin agent to sell their home on the open market, we know there are plenty who would prefer to avoid the listing process altogether and sell their home as-is to RedfinNow.”
Glenn Kelman
With the addition of Minneapolis-St. Paul, RedfinNow is now available in 30 markets across 15 states and the District of Columbia. Despite its smaller reach, RedfinNow has become a main driver of growth for Redfin as revenues skyrocketed 1,000 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2021.
“[RedfinNow] grew revenues by more than 1,000 percent all while selling homes above our forecasted price,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said during a Nov. 4 earnings call. “When other iBuyers were paying more, we were paying less. Redfin Now could have grown to almost any size if we hadn’t been disciplined in what we pay for homes.”
Kelman said RedfinNow will continue to grow at a slow and steady pace as the company uses the platform as a side dish rather than the main entree for homesellers looking to enter the market. “Redfin isn’t an iBuying company at all,” he said. “It’s part of what we do, but it’s not who we are.”
