One of the funniest darn things we've seen on any realtor's website was the reviews of one particular realtor's service.
There were only two reviews. Each was by a parent of the realtor.
You could just guess how that came about.
"Mom, I'm building out my website. Can you write a review about that time I sold your investment property?"
"Why, sure, sweetie! And I'll get one from your dad, too!"
"Awww thanks, Mom! You're the best!"
Yelp, it was not.
This episode came to mind as we received in our email inbox a "tour insight" from a Redfin agent... on a local Redfin listing.
The listing is 1201 23rd St. (6br/5ba, 3442 sqft.), a custom, corner-lot Mediterranean that has just finished its first 4 months on the market. (1201 23rd is listed by Tom Royds, Redfin Corporation, and is asking $3.298M.)
Would the "insight" offer biting criticism?
Flowery, over-the-top praise?
Nah.
The comments were anodyne.
"Unique 2 level home, corner lot with plenty of room and storage."
If you've looked at the home at all, you know that the word "unique" is doing a lot of work there. Otherwise, the comments are not really adding much, and certainly not taking away.
And, hey, they didn't call it a "review," they didn't make any promises about being objective. They were just offering "insights."
Was it a borderline decision to have a Redfin agent review offer "insights" on a Redfin listing? Yeah, we still think so. You can argue it either way.
Then we looked a bit deeper, and our eyes widened.
Turns out, Redfin's automated-valuation bot is saying that Redfin's listing is worth less than the list price.
Right there in their own listing, Redfin is displaying a property value estimate (it appears twice!) that is substantially below the current list price, and far below the original list price ($3.500M).
Awkward.
But hey, we'll call this a strike in favor of transparency.
If the judgment call of having an in-house agent write a comment was iffy, at least we can say that including a valuation that undercuts the list price is bold.
Give 'em a virtual pat on the back.
Here at MBC, back in 2018, our exposé demonstrated how Redfin sometimes hides "inconvenient" valuations from their own listings. (To their credit, Redfin copped to it, telling us that sellers can ask their Redfin agents to disable the display of estimates.) But in this instance, they're not hiding a price opinion that cuts against their seller client.
Speaking of back-pats, this may be a good chance to remind readers that Redfin's home-valuation algorithm earned an A- from us last year.
The Redfin estimates were substantially closer to the actual sale prices on more than a dozen listings we tracked from market debut to sale. See "Final Results: The Early-2022 AVM Bot Challenge."
Zillow barely earned a C+ in the same assessment, and Realtor.com went home with a humiliating D.
But even Redfin's A- comes with a caveat. Their bots were within 5% of the actual sale price only 61% of the time. In 30% of the examples, they were off by more than 10%, which is almost worse than pure guesswork.
Auto valuations are mostly for fun. We've never once received (or presented) an offer where the automated valuations from some website were mentioned at all.
Still, if your own broker is publicly saying your house isn't worth what you're asking, it's probably not that fun.
Please see our blog disclaimer.
Listings presented above are supplied via the MLS and are brokered by a variety of agents and firms, not Dave Fratello or Edge Real Estate Agency, unless so stated with the listing. Images and links to properties above lead to a full MLS display of information, including home details, lot size, all photos, and listing broker and agent information and contact information.
