Our promise. We provide a buying advantage with verified reviews and unbiased editorial research.
About Redfin
This profile has not been claimed by the company. See reviews below to learn more or submit your own review.
Redfin Reviews
A link has directed you to this review. Its location on this page may change next time you visit.
- 4,243,139 reviews on ConsumerAffairs are verified.
- We require contact information to ensure our reviewers are real.
- We use intelligent software that helps us maintain the integrity of reviews.
- Our moderators read all reviews to verify quality and helpfulness.
I use Redfin service to try to find a home in the agent referred me her finance guy. I was pre-approved and told everything good to go so we began a contract for a house. Now it's time for the final financing and nobody wants to co-sign on what I was pre-approved for. And now I'm requesting my earnest money back since I was denied financing on no fault of my own. Redfin and her Finance guy are refusing to do so.
I have tried to post the review on Redfin's website since last fall but they won't let me because they know it is very negative. We realize that this review is long, but please take the time to read it all. It will be worth it. Last June, we decided to move from our condo in Pelham, NH. Due to the hot real estate market, we decided to buy first & then sell our condo. We hired Redfin, partly based on their low selling commission when you both buy & sell through them. Our assigned agent was primarily a Buyer Agent, but for efficiency, she would also act as our Seller Agent. This turned out to be a poor decision, as you will see below.
Our agent was very hard working. She put in a lot of hours & worked 7 days per week. But she worked under & strongly supported a system which is highly flawed, especially in a hot market. The system is meant to enable Redfin to reduce its commissions by reducing its expenses. This is done by having their agents handle many clients simultaneously. I never found out how many, but for our agent it seemed to be limitless. She was very rarely able to speak on the phone, since she was always busy with another client or property. I think she answered the phone once during the several months of me calling. I was expected to text or email her for everything and she would text or email back, generally avoiding a phone call. On occasion, she would schedule a phone call, but sometimes it didn't happen until the next day!
My wife was out of town for the summer, so I was left to look at the properties for sale. I looked at about 13 condos during June & July but our agent never came with me to see any of them & yet she was supposedly advising me what to do. (As a matter of fact, we never met our agent in person until we put our condo on the market to sell in August. I'm sure that if we didn't have something to sell, we would have never met her!) Other "agents" were sent to view the properties with me. That's all they were allowed to do. I found out later that they are contractors, not actual Redfin employees. They were generally different each time, so there was no continuity. After the showing, they would report to our agent & I was never allowed to speak with them again!
In July, I saw an older condo in Hudson which seemed to have many of the things we wanted. Redfin sent an agent to view it with me. The kitchen & master bath of the unit had been updated, but the rest of the place was in poor condition (mostly cosmetic, but probably about $10k to fix). We decided to make a "must take it now" offer to preempt any other buyers or an open house. Our agent advised us not to require a home inspection (a poor piece of advice for a 34 year old house), to put down a large, non-refundable deposit & to offer a huge amount of money above the listing price ("if the money doesn't make any difference to you, just offer it!", she said.)
The listing price was $385k. I told our agent that no unit had ever sold for even $400k in the community & that the high condo fee ($699) was a big problem for people looking for places under $400k. I was thinking about $405-$410k. She suggested we move it up to $425k. Unfortunately, we took her advice. The buyer accepted our offer. My wife came home & when we did our final walkthrough with our agent, my wife cried because of the condition it was in. Our agent said that the condition was exactly what she expected! We thought about backing out, but we had a big, non-refundable deposit. So we bought it. We estimate that we paid about $40k more than we should have.
When we put our house on the market in August, we finally met our agent. She came over with the photographer. She did a market analysis & came up with a value of $590k to $610k. We thought that was way too high, so we listed it for $559k. Her listing, to be blunt, was poor. We had to rewrite it to make it usable. We were not impressed with some of the photos that were taken, either. We got a low offer, which we were going to counter offer. But our agent said that it was a good offer & to take it. She said to wait for the house inspection & if anything comes up, to use the price reduction to refuse to do any repairs. But the inspection didn't show anything wrong, so we lost the opportunity to counter offer. That probably cost us $7500 & even with that, it was about $50k below the market analysis. Our agent didn't even attend the closing.
That's a summary of our experiences with Redfin. We are very dissatisfied with the way that they represented us, both for buying & selling. We feel that, at the very least they should refund all the commissions they received for both. Our advice to everyone who is thinking about using Redfin is to use someone else, unless you like:
1. Having an agent whom you may never meet.2. Having to text your agent to schedule an appointment to speak on the phone.
3. Having different agents whom you've never met (& will probably never see or speak to again) show you properties to buy.
4. Getting buying & price negotiating advice from your agent who has never seen the property you are considering.
5. Having to write your own listing to have a decent one when selling.
We experienced all of these when we bought & sold our houses with Redfin. Instead of saving money on the commissions, our agent's poor advice for both buying & selling cost us about $50k.
Thank you, you have successfully subscribed to our newsletter! Enjoy reading our tips and recommendations.
I purchase my mobile home last Oct 2022 and when you look up the address and it comes up under RED.FIN and pictures of my home which I would like removed. Also there is a sentence that says that my home was BOUGHT WITH JORDON **. I PURCHASED MY HOME NOT MY AGENT. I WISH THIS CORRECTED ON THE WEBSITE.
I bought a brand new house, which I had custom-designed and built by a builder. One year after the closing, my house was estimated at $741,000 on Redfin, while it was valued at $717,000 on Zillow at the time. I decided to add a deck for $16,500 and wanted to update the information on Redfin, so I created an account. When I created the account, Redfin collected some additional demographic information about me that could help them identify me. However, the same week, they reduced my valuation to $721,000. I believe that being ** cost me $20,000 less on the valuation of my house, even after I added a $16,500 deck to the property.
Furthermore, Redfin continued to downgrade my valuation, while Zillow continued to show the correct valuation trend. Today, twenty months after closing, my house is valued at $716,000 on Redfin, while it is valued at $777,000 on Zillow. I am dismayed by the blatant racist discrimination based on the color of my skin. I hope that one day someone will investigate this issue and hold them accountable.
For real estate agents, I do not recommend Redfin Partnership. As a former partnership agent, I always did my due diligence and stuck to the agreement of our contract, never leaving owing them money. Here is my complaint, just because another agent whom I have no idea who it is, owes them money somehow, none of my business I have nothing to do with that. But still, Redfin turns my account off due to something I am not part of. According to Mr. ** because we are under the same brokerage every Redfin Partner in that brokerage will have their account turned off, which means no more leads. It is very disappointing that this is the way they are handling their problem. I will not be part of a company that is not ethical and runs its business like a mafia.
Kevin **, PA. PREMIER SOTHEBYS INTL REALTY. MLS# **. Very unethical practices with me as a buyer like me just to get the sale. Had me not to go with my realtor and wanted the commission for himself he stated to me. StayAway. Buyer beware!!!
While looking for a property to rent I came across Redfin. I saw several properties that I was interested in and reached out individually for each one. I submitted the necessary financial information that was asked, however, I never received a response for any of the several appointments that I attempted to schedule. The only email I received was to verify my email address. Having a good credit score (+700) and the means to afford the properties I was interested in, I’m not sure why after three weeks I still have not had communication with anyone.
From the emails Redfin keep sending me I do not think I could find a more unprofessional Realty firm than these people and cannot understand why anyone would take them seriously. Those emails show that they have absolutely no understanding of their market. They send out notifications in an attempt to have me give them a listing by stating that now my house is worth around $460,000 despite the fact that it was last appraised at $465000 when I refinanced in 2018 and that recent comparables show it's worth to be closer to $900,000.
In support of their lowball contention they showed a comp which had recently sold for $960,000. That comp happened to be the house next door which was smaller than mine and slightly older and which had previously shown on my appraisal in 2018 as worth $390,000. About a week later, they sent me another notice proclaiming that they would be able to sell for more than the house next door and that they might be able to get $457,000 for mine. What's more they would only charge me a 1% commission! Such a deal.
Used Redfin when we were looking for a house some years ago, they assigned us an agent, my wife and I were very excited to meet her and work with her, so we met her and made plans… Then she disappeared…. No emails, no text, no calls… Probably just didn’t like us, later we found another agent (not from Redfin) and she was great.
The Olympia WA Redfin real estate agent Mark ** whom we hired to sell or house sabotaged us by giving us bad advice, by not responding to interested buyers’ agents, doing zero marketing, taking absolutely no initiative and being extremely unresponsive to us. The damage was so big that we were not able to reverse it even after we changed agents.
Redfin author review by ConsumerAffairs Research Team
Redfin was established in 2006 in the Pacific Northwest with the goal of making the real estate industry more consumer-friendly. It is a real estate brokerage website whose agents do not work on commission, and its real estate website lets consumers search MLS listings. The company now operates in most U.S. states and advertises that it has helped consumers save $300 million.
Map search: Redfin’s map search distinguishes itself by providing users with market prices for neighborhoods within their search area. When a user searches for listing in any given city, they can hover over different areas to see the range of listing prices and the median price. This feature makes it easy for homebuyers to locate a neighborhood in their price range.
Transportation scores: Under the neighborhood information section on every listing, Redfin includes transportation scores for walking and biking as well as access to public transportation. Buyers who do not want to own a car will find this information helpful.
Account features: Once website visitors create a Redfin account, they can mark properties to checkout, favorite them or both.
App: Redfin’s mobile app can send users instant updates when a new property matching their criteria is listed, meaning they see properties before potential buyers who only use an agent or browse online.
Commission refund: Redfin agents are salaried employees who do not work on commission. They can earn bonuses based on customer satisfaction. Because agents do not work on commission, they don’t accept the commission paid by non-Redfin realtors. Instead, the commission goes to the homebuyer in the form of a refund after the buyer closes on the property.
The ConsumerAffairs Research Team believes everyone deserves to make smart decisions. We aim to provide readers with the most up-to-date information available about today's consumer products and services.
Redfin Company Information
- Company Name:
- Redfin
- Website:
- www.redfin.com
You’re signed up
We’ll start sending you the news you need delivered straight to you. We value your privacy. Unsubscribe easily.