SubscribeRedfin Attacks SoCal’s INTx’ers
February 8, 2007
While Glenn Kelman was co-hosting an event in San Francisco with Socketsite, his compadres were putting the finishing touches on a Southern California launch, which, per the embargoed-until-7am-press-release, “increases the number of properties for sale on its site by more than 340 percent.”
Greg Swann has previously pointed out that Redfin’s target markets are high-priced INTx-heavy metro areas — translated, for those of us not familiar with Myers-Briggs personality profiles, as high-priced markets with lots of geeky, web-savvy, technical, analytically-minded people. Why high-priced? Because when you take home only 1% of the purchase price as your commission, you have to sell expensive homes to make it worth your while. Why geeky, web-savvy, and so forth? Because grandpa and grandma, or even mom and dad, definitely ain’t gonna be buying real estate online.
Does SoCal meet those requirements? Let’s see what Neighboroo has to say about housing prices…
High-priced? Absolutely! Redfin’s Seattle home (1) is but a pin-prick of expensive (red) real estate in a sea of otherwise affordable green. The company’s second market, the Bay Area (2), is a reliable splash of red, as is target (3), southern California.
Alas, Neighborhoo doesn’t yet have a Myers-Briggs mashup available, so we’ll have to do with a rough approximation by looking for, say, well-educated Gen-X and Gen-Y’ers — a certain percentage of which are bound to be INTx’ers.
Seattle’s population is solidly Gen-X… (dark green)… and Gen-Y (again, dark green)…
…and college-educated:
The Bay Area’s demographics look quite similar:
A heavy sprinking of Gen-X and Gen-Y’ers…
…and all apparently reasonably well schooled:
The greater southern California area looks very similar:
Plenty of Gen-X and Gen-Y’ers:
and a generally well-educated populace, though not as reliably dark green as Seattle and the Bay Area:
Perhaps the good people from Neighboroo could help us figure out Redfin’s next markets? They’ve publicly talked about Boston, New York, and Chicago, but what about other areas? Austin? Probably not — prices aren’t high enough.
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We could help Redfin, but we may have to charge them…
Excellent use of Neighboroo. That’s what we want people to use our stuff for. Dig. Research. Find locations. Our next batch of features will make it even easier.
[...] 3 Oceans, Redfin Attacks SoCal’s INTx’ers [...]
The real estate market here is still just too difficult to maneuver for most people, even the geekiest. This expansion is a numbers game for them. They’ve had a couple of hundred sales in Seattle, so if they get a couple of hundred in LA, a couple hundred in SF, they’ll probably survive, at least for awhile.
[...] Here’s one thing they have in common: they both aim to move a lot (and I mean a lot!) of real estate. Russell and his team currently sell about 400 homes per year but they’re aiming for 2000. The number of transactions Redfin has had is not public, but however many it is, they certainly also have ambitious expansion plans, including a future foray into Chicago, Boston, and D.C. [...]
[...] the stroke of genius on Redfin’s part: one of their core target demographics — Gen X and Y geeks living in high-priced markets — tend to not take our assertions as fact until they see the underlying data-driven [...]
[...] of transactions Redfin has had is not public, but however many it is, they certainly also have ambitious expansion plans, including a future foray into Chicago, Boston, and [...]