Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today launched its real estate e-commerce service for the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas, adding more than 50,000 property listings to Redfin.com. The company also opened its first East Coast headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia. Catherine Jardine, formerly of Long & Foster, was hired to lead local real estate operations.

In conjunction with the launch, Redfin closed a $12 million series C financing led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Redfin will use the financing to continue its national expansion and enhance its website.

Redfin's service now will be available in the District of Columbia; Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland; and Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Manassas, Prince William and Stafford counties as well as the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church in Virginia.

For customers who can find a home to buy on their own, the premise of the Redfin service is to use technology to offer better service from offer to close than a traditional agent, and to refund most of the commission. District-area consumers now can buy or sell MLS-listed properties online, using the Web to gather basic information and then work with a local, experienced Redfin agent on pricing, negotiations and escrow.

Buyers who work with Redfin get two-thirds of the commission refunded at closing; for a $500,000 house offering a typical three percent commission to the buyer's agent, the refund would be $10,000. For a $1 million house, the refund would be $20,000. Redfin also offers each home-buyer a free afternoon of home tours, scheduled via its website.

Sellers pay a flat fee of $3,000, saving $12,000 over a typical seller's agent commission of three percent on a $500,000 house. Unlike any other brokerage, Redfin pays its agents bonuses based on customer satisfaction, not commissions, and offers a 100-percent-customer-satisfaction guarantee, refunding all commissions and fees if the customer is dissatisfied.

"With the opening of the Washington, D.C. market, Redfin now reaches more than 8 million new consumers, many of them young, on-the-go professionals likely to embrace our online model," said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. "Howard and Montgomery Counties are two of the three most tech-savvy counties in the U.S., while Fairfax and Loudoun Counties are headquarters to two of the East Coast's largest technology companies, so we have reason to hope Redfin can thrive in the area."

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.