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REAL ESTATE
What Redfin’s Anticlimactic Exit Says About the Real Estate Industry
Maybe the system already works well enough
I vividly remember the 60 Minutes piece back in 2007 that focused on a frisky new discount real estate brokerage that promised to upend the sclerotic real estate industry.
The upstart was Redfin, and from the credulous tone of the prime-time piece, CBS viewers could assume the Seattle-based company was poised to rescue American homebuyers and sellers from wasting billions in real estate commissions.
“Real estate is, by far, is the most screwed-up industry in America, and we feel like things that Amazon or eBay or Yahoo! have done for other industries, we can do for the real estate industry,” Redfin founder Glenn Kelman told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl.
The implications were clear: Real estate agents and their commissions were about to go the way of travel agents and full-commission stockbrokers.
“We’re just going to go door to door, house to house, and try to change this industry,” Kelman added.
Two decades on, Redfin has in some ways lived up to Kelman’s vision. It’s still around, still offering discounted commissions, still poking the bear that is the U.S. residential real estate industry.
