What Would You Do With $10 Million?

Pay Green Bay Packer Brett Favre’s salary for the year ““ what I wouldn’t give to get him on the Seattle Seahawks’ payroll for Saturday’s showdown. Take a spin in the General Lee ““ admit it, you’ve practiced the smooth, window-entry move like Bo and Luke Duke. Spend a night (and a half) together with the Rolling Stones ““ maybe Mick will tell you just how he gets into those tight pants.

At Redfin, we decided the money was better spent on more important things. Actually, more than 1,000 more important things such as weddings, renovations, larger homes and new furniture for our customers.

By the end of 2007, we refunded more than $10 million in commissions to home buyers nationwide. Since the launch of the home-buying service in February 2006, we have helped more than 1,000 people buy a home, with an average refund of $10,106. Since September 2006, we also worked with nearly 300 home sellers saving them more than $3 million in commissions, for an average savings of more than $12,142.

Did we make the right choice? We sure think so. But we couldn’t have done it without you, our customers and best critics. So, thank you for your support and feedback.

The $10-million-refund milestone caps a busy year for Redfin. We expanded from San Francisco and Seattle to Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Washington, D.C. Redfin also was the first brokerage to offer online forums for consumers to communicate with one another about the home-buying and -selling process and about the quality of their service from Redfin.

We also launched three major initiatives:

• The Redfin Advantage: a one-year study showing that Redfin clients not only get a commission refund but also a negotiating advantage in excess of $4,000 over clients of traditional brokerages;
• The Real Estate Scientist: data-driven guidance for home buyers and sellers to get better results, based on Redfin and academic studies; and
• The Real Estate Consumer Bill of Rights: a set of reforms for ensuring that consumers are well-informed, supported by more than 25 real estate businesses.

Keep your eyes on Redfin in 2008. We have a lot of exciting things in the works.

Bonus link: The programmer dress code. Redfin’s dev team already is top-notch, but should we mandate beards, long hair and dressing like a slob? It seems to work for all these guys.

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