By The Tim on September 8th, 2009 at 1:29 PM · 17 Comments
This is a guest post from Kevin Lisota of Findwell Real Estate. The Bay Area may still have more tech companies than Seattle, but we definitely seem to be leading the way in real estate tech, with four local companies now offering iPhone apps for real estate search. Unfortunately I don’t have an iPhone, so Kevin generously offered to write a comparison of the various iPhone apps available for Seattle real estate searchers.
Seattle has suddenly become a hotbed of real estate apps for the iPhone, now with four major competitors: Zillow, John L Scott, Coldwell Banker, and the newest entrant, Redfin. Since The Tim doesn’t have an iPhone, I offered to jump in and and provide a head-to-head SMACKDOWN between these four heavyweights of the Seattle real estate world. (Full Disclosure: I run findwell, a competitor to all of these companies and an advertiser on Seattle Bubble. We don’t have our own iPhone app at the moment, so I can be objective in this comparison.)
Click below to read the full SMACKDOWN.
[Read more →]
Categories: Features
Tags: Coldwell, Findwell, iPhone, JohnLScott, Redfin, Zillow
By The Tim on August 5th, 2009 at 10:17 AM · 7 Comments
Couple of interesting developments in local real estate search this week.
First up, local discount brokerage Findwell (a Seattle Bubble advertiser) announced today that they are partnering with Estately to provide a more user-friendly search experience. Sounds like it should be a good match for both parties. A good search tool was the one (big) thing that the Findwell site lacked in its competition with Redfin. I think they could attract more people to use it if they put it more prominently on the front page, but this definitely seems like a step in the right direction to me.
Secondly, Seattle’s all-industry real estate blog continues to evolve beyond its pure blogging roots. Yesterday founder Dustin Luther unveiled a newly polished, more commercial site design as well as their very own home search tool. Personally, their new search feels clunkly to me compared to the offerings that have been available for years from Redfin and Estately. With the real estate search market as saturated as it is (especially here in Seattle), I think Dustin’s got a pretty difficult uphill battle on this one.
So what’s your opinion of the Findwell / Estately partnership and Rain City Guide’s new look and search tool?
Categories: News
Tags: Estately, Findwell, Rain City Guide, real estate search
Kevin Lisota of Findwell sent me a heads up about a rule clarification sent out today by the NWMLS to all their members:
Short Sales: Status Change Required after Mutual Acceptance
Rule 120 (b) requires the listing office to timely report the mutual acceptance of a purchase and sale agreement for a short sale as Pending (e.g. Pending, Pending Inspection, Pending Back-Up). A Short Sale property shall not remain in the Active status if the buyer and seller have reached mutual acceptance and are waiting for the lender’s consent to the transaction. The only Short Sale properties that should remain in the Active status are those properties where the buyer and seller have not reached mutual acceptance.
In other words, properties that have any offer approved by the seller and awaiting bank approval must be marked as “pending,” regardless of the known fact that many banks are taking 2-3 months just to respond to such offers, many of which are then rejected by the bank.
This rule is not new, but according to Kevin, there is “zero consistency for this practice right now.” One would assume that many agents are already doing this, causing some of the growing discrepancy between “pending” and closed sales. Of course, if there are a non-trivial number of agents out there not doing this already that begin to do so now, this will definitely artificially inflate the pending sales data even further.
Kevin points out two problems with this rule (and the NWMLS’ newly-found fondness for enforcing it):
- Your pending numbers are going to be even more messed up. Often the distressed home seller will sign anything they receive, no matter how crazy, and then submit it to the bank. (Many banks won’t even look at it without a signed contract.) If typical wait times are a 2-3 months for a response, you’ll see all of those properties marked as pending, yet they are not pending until the bank approves the transaction. To give you an example, we have a short sale buyer that is in contract with the seller. They signed an agreement for a sales price close to $300k off the list price and more than $300k being owed to the mortgagor. I believe that this price has zero chance of success, yet the seller signed it just to move things along at the bank.
- This policy is not in the best interests of short sellers. Since there is limited success getting buyer’s offers approved, particularly lowball offers, it is in the seller’s best interests to continue marketing the property to try to attract better buyer offers while they wait for bank approval. The moment you change it to pending, it disappears from websites and no one will seriously look at the property any more.
At this point, I’ll continue to report “pending” sales in our monthly summaries, but will be converting our regularly scheduled graphs to closed sales, since that is a statistic that has had a consistent definition since 2000 (as far back as my data goes).
Categories: News
Tags: Findwell, NWMLS, pending, short sales
By The Tim on November 10th, 2008 at 9:28 AM · 38 Comments
As the housing market has slowed dramatically from the heady boom years of 2005 and 2006, the number of discount real estate brokers has been on the rise. While Redfin made a big splash in 2004, and continues to be the discount market leader, as the market tumbles other competitors continue to crop up.
As recently as September, over a year into the local market decline, discount brokerage Findwell opened its doors, offering half-priced services for home buyers and sellers. Even more extreme is 500 Realty, which was launched in August 2007 and offers to refund 75% of the buyer’s commission.
With an ever-shrinking pool of home buyers (and therefore successful sellers)—just over 3,000 SFH and condo sales closed between all of King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties last month—the squeeze is on for real estate brokers of all stripes, discount or full service. I find it quite interesting to see how the different companies are dealing with the tight market.
Redfin is constantly improving their search technology (which is amazing), and recently announced a restructuring of their commission structure and services offered. Meanwhile, newcomer Findwell is doing their best to make headlines and get their name out there, and has declared a “customer service challenge” to Redfin. And of course regular readers of the comments here are aware of the ever-persistent guerrilla marketing campaign waged by Ray Pepper and the folks at 500 Realty.
Personally, I think there’s plenty of room in the discount real estate services market for some healthy competition like this. In a way, it makes sense that a slowing market and falling prices would bring out more low-cost competition in this field. Since sellers have already seen their paper equity take a significant hit, they want to save as much money as possible. For buyers, the old days of depending entirely on your real estate agent to find you a home are long gone, so why should they still be paying 3%? (And don’t try to tell me that “the seller pays” so the buyer’s agent is free, because only one person shows up at closing with a check—the buyer.)
Will companies like Redfin, Findwell, and 500 Realty have long-term staying power? I certainly hope so. Will they have a large enough impact on the overall profession to usher in the closing chapter for fixed 3% buyer’s and seller’s commissions? Time will tell…
Full Disclosure: Both Redfin and Findwell are advertisers on Seattle Bubble.
Categories: News
Tags: 500 Realty, discount brokers, Findwell, Redfin
