This is all it really takes to get on our good side, and get us to check out a site…again, “We added you to our real estate blog links because we think your site is a great place for people to read up on the SF real estate market.-Redfin” That and cocktails at any reputable watering hole in the city is a straight shot to our heart.
All joking aside (on second cocktail now), Redfin’s new SF site is pretty slick. Will it help them make more sales in San Francisco? We’re not quite sure, but the site is loaded with information like new listings, neighborhood data, school information (not that it really matters in San Francisco), restaurants, grocery stores, a Forum, and on and on.
Overall, we’d give the site a thumbs up for ease of use, wiz bang features, and general data mashing goodness.
However, they use Zillow for property estimates. In case you didn’t know, Zillow is just a big marketing machine that keeps churning out garbage that really doesn’t help or effect San Francisco and our market. We think Redfin would be better off having a “contact us for an accurate property estimate of this home” button instead of using Zillow. Capture that lead, don’t send them to Zillow. Better yet, direct them to us! (Sorry, had to throw that one in there.) Go check it out.
-Full disclosure: this is in no way shape or form a paid post. Not yet anyway. Depends on what kind of tab we can run up at the bar.
–Redfin [website]
–60 Minuets, $60 billion, and one Redfin lurking in the waters [theFrontSteps]
–Redfin Drowning in Red [theFrontSteps]
–It’s for sale, I saw it first! [theFrontSteps]
–John Colins Cocktails [website]
There was a Redfin listing on Filbert and Octavia for a SFH at $1.75 mil several months ago. The SFH was about 1,500sqft and not that great. Anybody know what happenedt o that place?
Call it sour grapes — i don’t like the new site. For starters, a good deal of the functionality doesn’t actually work – I selected 5 different homes in Potrero Hill and attempted to see the local restaurants — results came back empty. For a company like Redfin — a national company trying to roll out a neighborhood specific product – it doesn’t surprise me to see things not working. I won’t lie -i’m biased as Garrett and I have spent countless hours building a real neighborhood / community based website that actually works and was populated with real data as opposed to yanking reviews from a 3rd party provider.
let me mix sports into this — “this is Redfin being Redfin” — the actual dashboard / website is great – it has a user friendly interface, solid use of mapping and a ton of information. That’s the end of the good stuff – this company would be far better suited changing their platform and becoming a lead generation biz for local Realtors. I’ve said this before – I stand by it — “test drive” a Redfin agent – you won’t get timely answers – you won’t get any insight – it’s impossible to be an expert in San Jose and San Francisco — hell it’s tough enough to keep up with a few districts in the city let alone 10 – 12 cities in the Bay Area.
i like the new transactional analysis about over and under on recent deals. i’d like to see them extend this further for trending data geeks like myself. they should include whether a property is selling over or under the assessed value as well.
In July, you wrote that they had about 15 closed sales in the SF area.
Have they had any more in the last 4 months? If so, what was the average price?