This is sort of like David’s 10-pound infant brother offering to protect David from Goliath. But I’m going to stand up for Redfin none the less.

Let’s start at the end with this Canadian video that single-handedly reverses all of the funny work that Canadian greats John Candy, Jim Carrey, and Dan Aykroyd did in their entire careers. Seriously, these unfunny dorks should be required to attend a Borat comedy camp in Kazakhstan for their entire summer vacation.

Oh, I get it! Consumers are so stupid that they would allow their home to be priced almost 20% below market value. How clever! And the only person who is knowledgeable enough to save the day is a traditional Realtor…so it’s worth it to pay 6% because these online guys can’t possible price your home properly.

Oh really?

So all this magical pricing data that traditional Realtors have…where do they get it? Experience, right? It’s just floating around in their heads like grandma’s famous cookie recipe? Right. Isn’t previous sales data stored….uhhh oh…ONLINE? So all a person really needs is an accurate list of recently sold comparable homes, and currently for sale comparable homes in their neighborhood in order to get an idea of how they should price their home.

And let’s not even mention Zillow or Cyberhomes as possible starting places for home valuation.

This video is meant to be an attack on Redfin, but it really misses the mark and instead is an incredible insult to the typical home owner. Do the Svengalis who made this video really think that the modern homeowner has no idea of what their property is worth? Is it really that difficult for the homeowner to see what a similar home in their neighborhood sold for recently, and then do the math and calculate what their home can sell for?

If you’re interested in viewing the original 60 Minutes report that these guys are spoofing you can look here, or just click the big 60 Minutes logo above this line.

We all know that the days of charging 6% to sell your home are over. So how can a company like Real-a-Save sell your Colorado home for such a low price?

I think the better question is: how can other companies continue to charge so much to sell your home?

The simple answer is that they can’t. You don’t have to let them. There are alternatives.

Share This

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 11:29 am and is filed under Our Company. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.