Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today launched its eyewitness property review site, Sweet Digs, for the San Francisco Bay Area. Bay Area home-buyers now will be able to read daily candid reviews of properties for sale at blog.redfin.com/sfbay.

The new Bay Area Sweet Digs offers as many as 30 eyewitness reviews per week of properties for sale in Bay Area neighborhoods from Santa Rosa to Fremont, including Berkeley, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto and neighborhoods across San Francisco.

In addition to the reviews, Sweet Digs publishes a daily email newsletter that highlights Redfin.com's most clicked-on, or most expensive or least expensive properties on the market. Published as a blog, the Bay Area Sweet Digs' feed is available at: http://blog.redfin.com/blog/sfbay/index.xml.

Redfin's investment in the site's quality has been significant. To launch Sweet Digs for the Bay Area, Redfin evaluated hundreds of candidates, and contracted with seven writers who are experts in their local real estate market:

• Marina Andriola: Santa Rosa, Sonoma County
• Taylor Tracey: Berkeley, Oakland
• Anna Marie Hibble: San Francisco Mission District, Noe Valley
• Kathryn Speraw: San Francisco Sunset District, Daly City
• Susan Brady: Redwood City, San Mateo
• Kris Newby: Mountain View, Palo Alto
• Sue Herz: Fremont, Hayward, Milpitas, Union City

As Sweet Digs' readership grows, Redfin hopes to expand its coverage.

The Bay Area Sweet Digs site builds on the momentum established by its Seattle counterpart. Since launching eyewitness property reviews on its Seattle site in December, the Redfin Sweet Digs team has reviewed more than 150 properties, and seen subscriptions increase by 41 percent.

"The success of Seattle Sweet Digs demonstrates that what real estate consumers crave above all else is candor," said Bahn Lee, the Redfin editor in charge of the initiative. "Our goal is to be scrupulously fair to the buyer and the seller, providing information, insight and photos unavailable anywhere else. By working with area real estate mavens, we're looking to bring local expertise to every market we serve."

Redfin (www.redfin.com) is the real estate industry's first online brokerage, combining a customer-focused team of real estate agents with online tools for making the process of buying or selling a home easy. Redfin is the only major search site to feature listings direct from broker databases as well as for-sale-by-owner and foreclosure properties from across the Internet. The company pays its agents customer-satisfaction bonuses, not commissions, and surveys every client, publishing each survey as well as details on the agent's negotiating performance and deal history. Redfin's service is available in the metropolitan areas of Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Washington DC, Baltimore, New York's Long Island and Westchester County as well as most of California, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California and Sacramento. To keep track of our daring exploits, subscribe to blog.redfin.com or our Twitter feed @redfin.