Redfin- San Francisco
Customer Service
While I have to give credit to Redfin- San Francisco for trying to “disrupt” the Real Estate market, they try to do so by disrupting the seller’s margin, only to improve Redfin’s overall numbers.
This is a great tool for a buyer, because according to every other Real Estate agent my wife and I spoke to, Redfin agents don’t know how to negotiate.
And it was evident when we had our consultation by the agent who stopped by our house.
It really doesn’t matter if I mention his name or not because the structure is all the same for every agent.
We were contacted by a representative of Redfin who got us in touch with an agent pretty fast.
A few emails had been exchanged with myself and the agent with some preliminary questions about our house and our educated guesses on value.
We came to a pretty reasonable expectation for what our house was valued, up until her arrived and basically went through every possible reason to devalue our house.
It dawned upon me, that since his motivations aren’t commission based, but rather time, he wanted to position our house as low as possible in an effort to get a quick sale.
Beyond this though, the agent was from Marin County and has had no experience selling in the Peninsula, let alone South SF.
Our house is within walking distance (2 blocks) from the BART station, which he wasn’t even aware of, despite the huge structure in clear view of our house.
He also contradicted himself multiple times throughout our discussion about value and price/ square foot, which I called him out on.
NET-NET they sent out someone to evaluate our house who had no idea about our market and was only comparing it to what I’m guessing the market he’s used to in Marin County.
When I mentioned earlier that they do not know how to negotiate, I’ve heard from multiple traditional Real Estate agents that when they’ve gone in as a buyer for a Redfin house, they basically bulldozed them into making fixes costing in the $50K+ area.
As a seller, that is not who you want working for you.
As a buyer you’re in luck if you want to buy a Redfin house, because apparently you’ll get it for what you want.
The Redfin agent who came to our house even said that people might “underbid” for our house.
Not to mention he had no idea about the increase in property value trends over the past 4-5 years in the Bay Area, and just cited a standard increase.
Joanne Del Torre was the best.
Joanne Del Torre was the best. She came into our home, was patient with me and my questions as a person who had never put a home on the market; as well as my elderly uncle who was the homeowner, and took the time to explain everything with honestly, in terms of the current market and chances of selling our home. She helped me to make our home presentable, and in a manner that would help us to sell fast.
She kept us current throughout the entire process, and worked with us during the most challenging last few days in the home, leading up to the final day of the key exchange. I would highly recommend Ms. Del Torre to anyone looking for someone with expertise, motivation, a sense of style, in terms of decorating the home for showings, lots of patience and commitment to their clients.
They like to play games and will not be accountable.
Redfin list at our home at the wrong sales price. When we asked them to fix it they said that they needed something that was not possible to provide. Our real estate agent tried to get the information from the MLS and redfin continues to send us in circles.
Zillow, on the other hand, was able to fix the problem with in minutes. Please beware of this company! Their customer service department is horrible. They like to play games and will not be accountable.
What a waste of time.
We are considering relocation and so in the process was interviewing various agents. Joanna Rose was the agent sent to talk with us. We liked the concept of Redfin but were a bit doubtful about whether or not they could really sell a property.
She surprised us. She came prepared and knowledgeable. We were pretty sure she might be the agent we had been hoping for. However, after an initial prompt email, we haven’t heard from her again. What kind of agent does that? What a waste of time.