Redfin Puts Home Pricing Power in Consumers’ Hands
Redfin Puts Home Pricing Power in Consumers’ Hands
SEATTLE – March 20, 2012 – (RealEstateRama) — Redfin launched an online tool that seeks to put the power of accurate home pricing in consumers’ hands. Redfin’s Home Price Tool helps home owners determine a fair price range for their home, using the same process and data that professional agents use.
This interactive tool is the first of its kind to allow customers to see, choose from and edit the value of homes that make up a comparable market analysis (CMA), just as an agent would. A home owner can then have a dialog with her agent about pricing of the home for the market, based on data that is updated every 15 to 30 minutes. No other CMA tool available to consumers has data that recent, which is crucial in providing accurate real estate pricing estimates.
“Estimating a home price is more art than science. When the home owner and her real estate agent both have access to the same information, it becomes a productive conversation and it paints a much more accurate picture of the home’s value,” said Jim Lamb, lead product manager for Redfin. “The Home Price Tool is a kind of freedom for home owners. They no longer have to accept what their agent or some website’s mystery formula tells them their home should be worth.”
Unlike other online CMA tools, the Home Price Tool’s formula is open and transparent, and helps educate home owners about the pricing process. It enables them to refine the resulting estimate before discussing pricing with a real estate agent.
Using the Home Price Tool, a home owner starts with a price range based on similar, recently sold homes in the neighborhood. If she doesn’t agree with the comparable homes used to create the estimate, she can remove homes that are not similar to her own, add others that are, or adjust the value of those that are included based on differences in size, condition, age or home improvements. The result is a fair and competitive price range based on current market activity that she can use as a guide in understanding what her home is worth, or even to price the home to sell. Once the home owner has assembled a list of comparable homes for the Home Price Tool, she can receive monthly email updates on additional recent sales by signing up for Redfin’s Home Report.
After creating an estimate in the Home Price Tool, the home owner can save it in her Redfin account to revisit later, or share it with friends and family through email. After using the Home Price Tool and seeing the estimate, a home owner is equipped to have a fact-based conversation about home pricing with a real estate agent. The Home Price Tool can connect her directly with a real estate agent for a free, no-obligation pricing consultation.
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’s agents handle every facet of a transaction, including tours, pricing analyses, negotiations, inspections and closings. 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 alongside the agent’s complete deal history. Redfin’s service is available in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, OR, Seattle, Washington DC, New York’s Long Island and Westchester County as well as most of California, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego. To keep track of our daring exploits, subscribe to blog.redfin.com or our Twitter feed @redfin.
