Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today launched Redfin Forums, local message boards for real estate do-it-yourselfers. Unlike forums aimed at connecting consumers with real estate agents, Redfin Forums is designed to let consumers communicate with one another. Also new today, Redfin.com now lets users exclude pending sales from online real estate searches, and filter listings by lot size and year built.

Available at forums.redfin.com, Redfin Forums allow any registered Redfin.com user to post questions and answers about the neighborhoods Redfin serves, how its brokerage service works, or ways its search site could improve. Redfin agents, product managers and local Sweet Digs bloggers are available to address Redfin-directed questions.

Even prior to the launch of Redfin Forums, Redfin has been answering more than 100 real estate questions sent each day via Redfin.com. Because Redfin's customers are actively buying and selling properties, many of the questions have focused on:

• neighborhood real estate prices;
• tactics for marketing listings or negotiating offers;
• local service-providers such as inspectors, mortgage brokers and photographers; and
• how Redfin's service for buyers and sellers works.

Redfin set up Forums to focus on these issues. To answer private questions, Redfin still offers an online form that its customers can use to email our agents.

"Redfin has always appealed to web-savvy, deal-driven consumers, who naturally like to talk to one another about what is happening in the market," said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. "Since our mission is to empower consumers to make informed decisions, it was natural that we would be one of the first real estate brokerages to open an online dialogue about the market, and our service."

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.