“If there’s one thing I know how to do,” a friend once told me, after one of those long, grappa-fueled nights of ping-pong that make the rest of life seem like such an enigma, “It’s how to have a good time.” Over the years, this friend has explained to me many things: what different drugs […]
How to Have a Good Time Read More »
A bill introduced by the Illinois legislature to outlaw refunding real estate commissions to consumers, which we complained about last month, finally died today. An obscure group called the Homeowners Club of America had supported the bill as a response to “West Coast brokers attempting to change Illinois commission structures.” Since the bill came just
Fighting Illini (Anti-Rebate Bill “Crushed”) Read More »
Believe it or not, but up until the beginning of March this year, we were not using a Content Management System (CMS). This post will take you through the reasons for needing a CMS, along with the process we went through to choose a CMS. We needed a CMS for the following reasons: We used
Plumbing Upgrade: We’re Using Bricolage For Content Management Read More »
Last fall we opened our doors for a live real estate mashup dubbed The Red Carpet; a sort of customer meets agent and engineer free-for-all. And I was reminded again why we don’t need ice breakers or alcohol (we’ll still bring it anyway) at our events. Real estate is the ice breaker. It’s like talking
The Red Carpet: Burritos y Beer y Real Estate Website Read More »
Like a hideously tortured beast finally broken free of its chains, Redfin’s engineering team has been on the rampage this winter, releasing the second major upgrade to our site in just the past 45 days. This one features Listing Metrics, a dashboard for Redfin customers selling their house to see whether their listing is getting
The Little Website That Could Read More »
Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt renew their argument that real estate brokers aren’t worth 6%, citing a study (PDF) conducted by Stanford economist B. Douglas Bernheim and one of his graduate students, Jonathan Meer, which shows that using a broker has no effect on a home’s average selling price. We are an (online) broker ourselves,
The Broken Tower and the Ivory Tower Read More »