Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today launched a real estate consumer's bill of rights, along with a petition to the National Association of Realtors for consumers to sign and a program for real estate brokers and other real estate-related organizations to support.

The bill is a set of ten rights designed to ensure that consumers get complete and open access to information about properties and the process of buying or selling properties. Examples include the rights to choose the services you pay for, to have an open discussion about houses for sale and to see all the houses for sale.

Earlier today, real estate news service Inman News published the rights, which also are available at http://blog.redfin.com/redfin/2007/04/consumer_rights.html. Through May 1, 2007, consumers can sign the petition based on these rights at http://www.petitiononline.com/recbr/petition.html. Real estate brokers and other real estate organizations can participate in a program supporting the bill of rights by visiting http://www.redfin.com/rights. The goal of the program is to offer consumers a choice of consumer-friendly real estate partners.

"Just about everyone in real estate agrees that real estate could be better," said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. "Individually, we feel helpless to make changes that together we could easily pull off. So we've set out some basic rights that we think everyone can agree to, with the idea of ensuring that real estate consumers always feel informed and in control. Our goal is to sign up brokerages large and small to support these rights, so that we can make this industry - our industry - the way consumers would want it to be."

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.