Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today launched its online real estate magazine, "Sweet Digs," for Southern California. Home-buyers in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego neighborhoods can read daily, local real estate market information via the Sweet Digs blog or email newsletter.

The new Southern California Sweet Digs will offer as many as 40 candid, saucy and analytical write-ups each week of recent sales, price reductions, open houses and real estate trends in local areas, including Beverly Hills, Irvine, Newport Beach, Ocean Beach and Westwood. Southern California already boasts some of the top real estate blogs, and Sweet Digs complements them with its hyper-local, data-driven format written by real estate fanatics, not agents.

Redfin's investment in the site's quality has been significant. To launch Sweet Digs for Southern California, Redfin evaluated hundreds of candidates, and contracted with a dozen writers who are experts in their local real estate market.

• Cindy Allen: Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Westwood
• Christina Chan: Playa Del Rey, Westchester
• Ron DeGenova: San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita
• Charles Song: Glendale, Pasadena
• Josh Toering: Long Beach, Palos Verdes

• Julie Lance: Orange, Santa Ana, Tustin
• Sheila McDaniel: Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo
• Brian Murphy: Huntington Beach, Newport Beach
• Debbie Sklar: Aliso Viejo, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel
• Sylvia Walker: Costa Mesa, Irvine

• Carol Hian: Hillcrest, North Park, Ocean Beach
• Tom Swell: Lemon Grove, Spring Valley

As Sweet Digs' Southern California readership grows, Redfin will expand its coverage. Today's expansion doubles the number of bloggers covering the West Coast. Sweet Digs plans to launch in Boston and Washington, D.C. later this year.

The Southern California Sweet Digs site builds on the momentum established by its San Francisco and Seattle counterparts. Sweet Digs launched December 2006 in Seattle and February 2007 in San Francisco to provide in-person property reviews. The site shut down in May due to a ruling from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS), a broker-owned database of Seattle-area listings; the NWMLS ruled that the property reviews violated rules against advertising another broker's listing. It relaunched with an analytical format in June. Since the original launch, the Redfin Sweet Digs teams have written nearly 600 posts and increased subscriptions approximately 40 percent; and already more than 1,200 readers have signed up to receive Southern California Sweet Digs.

"Southern California's Sweet Digs covers the largest Redfin market and some of the most interesting real estate in the United States, from Hollywood celebrity hideaways to surfer shacks in San Diego," said Bahn Lee, Sweet Digs' managing editor. "Redfin's Southern California customers have been clamoring for more information, like local market trends and neighborhood news, to complement Redfin.com's home-search data, which is exactly what Sweet Digs provides."

Consumers who wish to read or register for Sweet Digs can visit:

• Los Angeles: losangeles.redfin.com/blog
• Orange County: orangecounty.redfin.com/blog
• San Diego: sandiego.redfin.com/blog
• San Francisco Bay Area: sfbay.redfin.com/blog
• Greater Seattle: seattle.redfin.com/blog
• Sign-up for daily, weekday emails: www.redfin.com/stingray/do/sweet-digs

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.