Online real estate broker Redfin today upgraded its home-buying service to offer consumers unlimited home tours and a dedicated agent's support throughout the home-buying process. Redfin also upgraded its home-selling service to offer tours of unrepresented buyers, and more marketing options. Both services for buyers and sellers feature slightly higher pricing for most clients. Separately today, the company also released a major new version of its search site to improve consumers' ability to find value in a distressed real estate market.

"This is our shot at the mass-market," said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. "We've taken everything we've learned about what consumers want from online and personal service to create an offering that has more of both. Everybody wants a real estate broker built from the ground up to use the web. But people also want unlimited, no-hassle home tours. And they want to call their agent whenever they need help. This is exactly what Redfin is delivering to its customers today."

"There is now no major personal service that a traditional agent offers that Redfin doesn't," Kelman continued. "More importantly, we have extended our fundamental competitive advantage -- using technology to give consumers the information and tools to be partners in the process -- so they can see the data their agent sees, so they can get support without sales pressure, so they can get better results while saving on fees. The average Redfin client who buys and sells through us will save nearly $20,000 in fees."

To support the new service, first offered in a Seattle trial in April 2008, the new website now integrates search features into a larger home-buying application:

• New office-hours signup: allowing consumers to meet us in person before choosing an agent.
• New agent chooser: customers can see available agents and pick one, the website changes so that agent can support their search.
• New agent profiles: displaying transaction histories and customer reviews so consumers can make an informed agent choice.
• Upgraded tours wizard: incorporating pre-approval documentation to support on-demand, no-commitment tours at scale.
• Upgraded offer & listing wizards: routing requests for service around an offer or a listing to the chosen agent.
• New visual design: to make it easier for consumers to engage a Redfin agent at any time during their search.

"We re-built every page and nearly every tool on Redfin.com," said Redfin Chief Technology Officer Michael Young. "This is our biggest release in years."

Redfin re-designed its site to support a new model for engaging clients. Until today, Redfin clients engaged Redfin by submitting a draft offer to the first available agent. But now consumers can choose an agent at the outset of the home-buying process, and get personal service from that agent at every step.

To choose an agent, consumers browse the new agent profiles on Redfin's site, which show for each agent:

• Transaction history: their recent deals, with dates, prices, addresses.
• Service ratings: Redfin surveys every customer & posts every response.
• Online activity: in Redfin Forums and our blogs.
• Online video: of the agent explaining her approach to real estate.
• Biographical information: number of transactions, education, testimonials.

Consumers can also evaluate agents in new weekly face-to-face office hours or by contacting agents directly by cell phone or email.

The other major change to Redfin's home-buying service is unlimited home tours. Previously Redfin had charged $250 for each set of home tours after two. Now Redfin.com visitors can tour as often as they like -- before or after choosing Redfin as a broker -- without affecting their commission refund, and with no commitment to Redfin.

"This is a liberating moment in the history of real estate, where property access has long been the major limit on consumer self-reliance," said Redfin Vice-President of Real Estate Operations, Scott Nagel. "Never before have consumers been able to schedule a home-tour online, with no pre-set limits, no personal obligation to a real estate agent, and no commitment to use the brokerage overall if they want to buy one of the homes they see. We can offer a no-strings service because we're confident that when customers tour freely, they'll choose Redfin freely too."

To accommodate unlimited home tours, Redfin has increased the number of field agents available to host tours, by 70% since March 2008.

To prepare for its service upgrade, Redfin conducted more than two dozen focus groups and usability sessions, and surveyed hundreds of Redfin.com visitors. In a June 2008 survey, 70% identified unlimited home tours as the most important service an agent could offer; 58% said being able to "talk to a Redfin agent before making an offer" would be the most important upgrade to Redfin's home-buying service.

With today's launch, Redfin is also upgrading its service for home-sellers, to offer private tours for unrepresented home-buyers and a more extensive, sustained online marketing effort that can be tracked in real-time from Redfin.com. As before, a client who sells a home through Redfin also gets a dedicated agent, data-driven pricing and the usual tools for marketing the listing in the MLS and from the curb. Redfin is also now offering professional photography of each listing at no extra charge. For an additional $2,000, a premium option adds an in-home consultation on pricing and staging, two hosted open houses and a postcard-mailing campaign.

Redfin is canceling the $250 charges for each tour but also reducing its refund from 66% to 50% of the commission we receive, for a new average savings of $7,500 in fees. Home-buyers who had engaged a Redfin agent or toured properties through Redfin between July 1 and November 5 in 2008 will get the new service with the old commission refund on any offer made by January 31, 2009. Redfin is also offering the old pricing to registered users who had begun a tour request or an offer, but never submitted it to Redfin.

Redfin is also increasing the price of its listing service from a flat fee of $4,000 to $5,000, saving the seller of a $500,000 listing $10,000 in traditional fees. The new premium service will cost $7,000, for a savings of $8,000. Consumers using Redfin to sell one home and buy another save an additional $1,000 in fees, for a total average savings of nearly $20,000 on the two transactions.

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.