” Protect yourself from unscrupulous Realtors”.

Over in one of the P-I forums someone was looking for a top buyer’s agent (by volume), and I suggested Redfin, because they have a small number of agents doing a lot of transactions. Their business model is such that they would be that way, but that doesn’t mean the firm overall is doing a lot of transactions.

I also suggested volume was not really a good basis to judge a buyer’s agent.

Redfin is eating somebody’s lunch but I think its a salad and a diet coke at Mickey D’s, not a steak sandwich at the Met. The business model is generally lowering costs by giving the client access to information and allowing the client to do some of the work themselves. I think they also out source some of the leg work on a piece work basis to the starving hords at other brokerages. The business model has promise but so far I don’t think it’s proved that it will be a huge gold mine or necessarily displace the old guard of the industry. Ray is in this business and I assume he is a little more optomistic than me on that issue. But if you ask him, I think he has also said before that he hasn’t entirely quit his day job. Ray, I value your opinion and I know you might be following this issue so feel free to tell me if I’m out to lunch.

In March, Redfin did 26 or 27 deals on the buy side (selling office is such brokerage industry anachronistic crap). According to what I pulled up, Redfin didn’t sell any of their King Co listings in March. They have about 40 listings. (Somebody correct me if zero sales of Redfin listings is wrong, that just seems statistically unlikely, and I screwed up somewhere.) The total number of deals in King Co in March was about 1500 residential and condo. Redfin’s average price appears to be close to the average price of about 445K. That’s a little under 2% of the King Co market. That’s up from closer to 1% a couple of years ago.

Redfin does more business than other brokerages per agent. In general, Redfin and most other discount brokers allows the client to access data and do some of the work in exchange for a rebate or discount. They attract clients through providing information and a discount rather than having agents harass their friends, relatives and the general public to gain market share. I always thought that rather than their normal refrigerator magnets, the best agent advertising mailer would be a condom with their picture on it saying “Don’t get screwed in your next deal. Call Joe Realtor at ____.” It would be even more symbolic if their face were at the end of the actual product and allowed to participate in the act. It would be kind of fun to get some made up with J. Lennox picture, but he might not see the humor in it.

The above numbers are my counts and involve some estimates and assumptions that may affect accuracy. I won’t take the time to explain them here.

Unfortunately you will need to make offers. Look for off market properties and make an offer that makes sense. Avoid new construction and blocks, or quadrants over built with new construction. There are sellers who want to move on and have the ability.

As an aside to the radfun comment, making offers is what radfun is good for. If you want to chose a property based on your own expertise then by all means make your low offer through radfun. Forget the commission and make an offer that makes sense to you.

BTW in the blog post mentioned from the folks at radfun they are saying REOs are well priced by the banks that brought you a global economic melt down. Be skeptical of these types of claims from anyone. In my opinion REOs are selling for top dollars because no one would pay the price at foreclosure.

That is interesting- I wonder what the sales mix is. With the high end homes in Bellevue, etc. not moving at all the typical high volume offices such as Coldwell-Banker East, (Bellevue) etc. are probably out of the running.

Let’s look at Redfin’s March numbers from the Seattle area.
We Have The Top Three Agents In King County

According to the NWMLS, Redfin agents Febe Cude, Trevor Smith and Rachelle King are tops among agents who represented home-buyers in King County for March based first on number of deals, then by total dollar amount. All six of our Seattle agents rank in the top sixteen for King County.

Looks like they are eating somebody’s lunch…
I wonder how they compare to the other brokerages in total

I am not sure if it was because the realtor had no knowledge of Latin or, more obviously, no knowledge of the real estate market but they failed to answer the question and started babbling non-sensically about how they knew a house where for the first time in a year 2 people had bid on it at the same time. I finally got with the program and went away with the belief that I need to buy now or be priced out forever. NOT!!!

Absolutely. Kirkland is an area that escapes me for value. Bellevue is also a mystery. There was a time when the planning of Bellevue made tremendous sense with the expansion of the Puget Sound region, but that is getting to be a distant memory. Microsoft and related industry along with bonuses and pay scale made the East side more viable. Again pay scale and bonuses may become a memory.

Today with commercial rents in down town Seattle, South Lake Union, Fremont and along Elliot coming down fast it’s my opinion that Seattle will become more viable as a job center than Bellevue. There is also pressure in the Seattle area because many companies are based in Bellevue and Bellevue will cave in a lot to keep business on the East side.

There are areas of Ballard worth having. Some parts of Ballard have been decimated by town house and condo building. If you stay north of 65th and below 85th from 15th to the water you should be able to find something viable. In Fremont you need to be north of 40th between 3rd NW and Fremont Ave up to 50th.

Avoid new construction. Buy something structurally sound. Consider a place that two people can share and have private space. Basements should be above 7′ 6” in head room. Look at expired, and off market listings that may have become rentals. One or two years of being a land lord usually straightens most people out.

There seem to be a lot of homeless people wandering around there. It will resemble the worst of SF in a few years IMO.

Maybe I am just a snob.

The advise of Headline news was to always get a lease for anyone who lives on your property. That would simply result in the same situation! The people in possession are tenants, and need to be evicted. Lease or no lease, the result is the same, but the news people didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.

The story was a non-story. It would be like any other landlord expecting the police to evict based on a call to 911. You need an eviction order.

Make the offer at about $250 and negotiate if you are at all interested.

That should be to offer $250K.

Reply – Quote

The seller now needs to be below $299950 with price reductions until it sells.

Make the offer at about $250 and negotiate if you are at all interested. Stop looking and start making offers if you are interested in buying. You look to know the market and neighborhoods. Once you have an idea then in today’s or any market then you start making offers.

Also ask an agent to look at off market properties. There must be thousands of people ready to sell for any price.

Sadly, however, Stanford has the world’s "chocolate"tiest school song:
From the foothills to the bay/ It shall ring as we sing/ It shall ring and float away/ Hail, Stanford, hail…

I was about to offer to chat with her/you about the campus, the area, etc, and then I realized that I graduated about the same year she must have been born, and the info might be a wee bit out of date!

In any event–in all those intervening years I have gained quite a bit of perspective about different types of higher ed institutions, and how to survive and thrive in them…if you think she’d like to talk a bit about that, please feel free to drop me a line via the forums and I’d be happy to meet you two for coffee.

“They shoot real estate agents, don’t they?”
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/04/11/real_estate/index.html
I only sampled the comments – but what a lot of vitriol – whoa. An as one commentator noted, this is just the beggining….

RE: Snigliastic @ 15 – Also, Redfin doesnâ��t have the whole price history, but it does show it has 250 cumulative days. why no entire pricing history?

They have the information, but are not allowed to display it as per NWMLS rules.

So I won’t display it either, but….

That house was listed in June ‘06 for 360,000 and the listing expired.
It has gone “pending inspection” twice, once in August ‘08, and once in Feb ‘09.
It has seen both price hikes and price drops.
The owner of the home also happens to be the listing agent. He used to live there . He also used to rent it out, and now it’s vacant.

They have the information, but are not allowed to display it as per NWMLS rules.

Last June/July, when I was thinking about buying a house, we looked at this house. It was listed around 280k. We decided it was a POS, and I decided to wait for prices to fall. Looks like 10 months later, it’s back on the market for about the same price. WTF?

Also, Redfin doesn’t have the whole price history, but it does show it has 250 cumulative days. why no entire pricing history?

Absolutely! And the thing is- age and experience don’t necessarily result in wisdom, just cynicism.

http://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/9716-4th-Ave-NW-98117/home/101668?utm_source=myredfin&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=listings_update&utm_nooverride=1

On a price per sq. ft. basis, it seems that this seller is way out of touch. Is that still a reasonable metric for a small 720 sq. ft. cottage?

Maybe they are anticipating the big turnaround that one agent is trying to convince me of:

“I have noticed a marked improvement in the Seattle market nearly across the board in the past 30-45 days. I’d like to show you two trend graphs I use for the lenders in appraisal reports. Inventories are down, pending sales are up and so are closed sales. The local media doesn’t want to cover good news but at some point, they will have to. The numbers don’t lie. The lowest interest rates in recent history along with the current administration’s helpful policies are creating a recipe for rebound (it’s about time!!) This may not apply to you guys because of the work situation but if you plan on staying here five years………From a realtor’s stand point, we are seeing increased activity from buyers in our office. I have three new buyer clients just this week. It could be just a spike but confidence is high that it’s a trend.”

Congratulations Scotsman! It’s nice to hear some great news like that. Things like that help renew my faith in humanity and God knows I’ve got precious little of that. May be we can still change the world? Thanks!

This is fun, slow to load and watch, but worth it, especially toward the end when unemployment ramps up. Seattle is again late to the game, but works hard to catch up!

http://slate.com/id/2216238/

Besides adding a different background color, they also now split their old “recent” sales data out by year.

It can be found here .

Hopefully Plastic Bags Doesn’t mind

Here’s the redfin discussion on this (with a really weird comment or two):

Here’s the redfin link to the house.

Cancel your appointment.

Send them the message the YOU are the one with the money.

1. They might have looked at their finances and realized that they’d be underwater at the original asking price.

2. When they first thought about putting it on the market, they interviewed agents to list it, and as some agents are less than realistic or honest, they might have been told ” I ‘ll be able to sell this house for x amount, after all it has those lovely granite countertops and adorable pergo, you people have such good taste” in order to get the listing, and they believe that tripe, and were upset that the agent convinced them to list it ” too low”.

3. Maybe a comp for sale sold at the higher price.

4. maybe they don’t really want to sell the house in the first place, and that fact that it’s attracting interest is scaring the beejesus out of them, so they raised the price to discourage it.

What would be the motivation of a seller to raise their asking price on the day you have an appointment to view their house?

Greed?