http://www.realestateconnect.com/sf07/bloggersconnect.aspx

[Editor's note: I (Alex) am not. Leaving town Thursday...tons to do prior to my departure. Please let us know what you learn.]

We started a real estate brokerage this year in an attempt to provide a different level of service and committment to San Francisco home buyers and sellers and to showcase the great neighborhoods in this city. I do believe the industry will see change and i’m working towards providing an environment and company that will remain a step ahead of that change — but on a local level.

I respect the folks at Redfin — I stand behind my remarks though. I question the area’s they decided to focus on and I question whether they learned from the folks that came before them — both the general lessons of the dot com era and their fellow on line real estate ventures.

What I learned at Zip Realty - a real estate transaction is like no other purchase - there are no two clients or homes that are alike and due to that, people demand and require personal attention. I’m a firm believer that the national on line brokerages fail to deliver the type of personalized service that many buyers and sellers require. Some folks are comfortable buying a new car on Ebay or another on line car site — many do research on line and then go to the dealership, most likely pay a higher price and enjoy personalized service. I sense our industry is similar and until an on line brokerage is able to offer first class personalized service they will fail to gain a substantial market share in the major cities in this country.

Anyone trying Redfin or FSBO is just clueless.

On the other hand, there is no point of using a traditional agent for buying, if you are willing to do the homework.

So, among those 15 closed transactions, how many was Redfin the listing agent and how many was it the buyer’s agent? I won’t be surprised if Redfin was buyer’s agent for all of them.

The best example I have is a SFH in Cow Hollow on Filbert st. asking $1.795 mil. Poor seller! The house is 1,500sqft, with no view, I think only 1 bath. The Redfin agent probably sold her HARD saying list with us, you’ll not only get $1.7.95 mil, you’ll save on fees! This is the BIGGEST no brainer stalefish in District 7. She should have priced it at $1.39 or $1.45 and see where it goes.

Redfin and other services are part of the reason why I DO NOT want to sell property for the next 10 years. Over the next 10 years, these new selling ways will become common place, and commission compression will occur. I believe flat fees will also become common place as well. These services will help consumers save money, and make housing even more robust. But, it’s still early.

Redfin got onto 60 Minutes because 60M was doing a piece on anti-competitive and deceptive practices by the NAR and its members based on the DOJ lawsuit. It devolved into the agent vs consumer program we eventually watched last Mother’s Day.

Full disclosure: I’ve known Glenn Kelman about ten years, in perhaps a one-degree- of-separation sort of way. I’m a fan.
[Editor's note: I didn't see any personal attacks in the post, and I am very much against them. If you can tell me what you found to be more personal, and less about the business model, I'd be happy to edit/delete. Being an entrepreneur myself, I know first hand the trials and tribulations that come along with it, and I applaud all entrepreneurs...that doesn't mean I'm opposed to allowing others to share what they feel is the other side of the story. Thanks for commenting Phil...I appreciate it, and think you said very well what you wanted to say, but how did you get online? Wasn't your laptop broken? ]

It’s interesting that several folks have mentioned sub division homes. Have you looked at the area’s Redfin currently services: Seattle, LA, San Diego, Orange County, San Francisco, Boston, Baltimore and Washington - Chicago soon. I’m familiar with all of these area’s with the exception of Orange County - all of them are neighborhood driven area’s and are markets more complex than subdivision after subdivision in my opinion.

There are plenty of good apples and bad apples slingin houses in San Fran — you won’t find anyone argue that fact - at least they should not. Every industry has a spectrum of people who work within in it and San Fran real estate is no different. I’m interested to see if they can build a successful model but it does pain me to see them market themselves as this beacon of change. Zip brought the model to the national market 8 years ago and I can’t see any major difference between their model and Redfin’s. (yeah they canned me along with our entire web design team - but i’ll still give em props for being the “first” to do something new)

Here in sf a lot of people have a lot of money so they probably are not ‘penny pinching’ like they would in a lot of the country. In SF people blindly over-bid more then both agents get.

I would disagree that every agent earns every penny here in sf. There are a lot of good one but man there are a lot of tools out there who do almost nothing on the buying side. I along with a # of my friends ultimately found our own houses and had very minimal interaction with a buying agent or got led in the wrong direction buy a buying agent based on their connections to other agent, which sadly happens a lot. There are a ton of good agents but just like anything else there are a ton of stink bombs out there as well.

Ultimately the buyer is the one who pays the agents, even though people claim ‘its the sellers’ that pay. But ultimately it is the buys money. So I can see where people would want to use Redfin to ’save’ money.

This company could succeed. Look at the doom and gloom of amazon.com years ago and look at it now. Or it could become another webvan.com and be out of business in a year. Only time will tell.