Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today announced the opening of a San Francisco office for software engineers and real estate agents. Redfin will continue to run engineering and real estate operations from its Seattle headquarters, but opened the San Francisco office to support national expansion plans, and aggressive research and development hiring. Today, the office hosts three engineers and three real estate agents with capacity for a dozen people.

The San Francisco office allows Redfin to draw on engineers from Silicon Valley as well as Seattle in its effort to build the industry's leading real estate e-commerce site. The office also provides a place for Redfin's Bay Area agents to meet clients with questions about buying or selling homes online. Redfin has experienced strong growth since expanding its Web site from Seattle to the Bay Area on May 31.

Redfin hired Sasha Aickin, previously of Plumtree Software, to run the San Francisco development team, and promoted Rosemary Vo, previously of Century 21, to manage local real estate operations.

"As part of its commitment to local service, Redfin will open a real estate office in all the major markets we serve," said Redfin CTO Brian Marsh. "But we have made an unusually deep investment in the Bay Area because the region is loaded with Internet-savvy real estate consumers, and great software engineers to boot."

The office is located at 604 Mission Street in downtown San Francisco.

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.