Redfin Real Estate - Chicago

Terrible. Can you imagine waiting every night for over a week for a response? My realtor tried to contact her on numerous occasions to follow-up on status. Selling a home is very emotional and to be this unprofessional is totally unacceptable. A simple phone call or email was all that was needed.

I've often heard that home buying can be a painful experience but I can honestly say that our experience was great thanks to Bob and his Redfin team! When it comes to real estate companies - Redfin is the best! If you haven't tried it - do so! You'll never go back to a traditional broker again! And nothing beats the redfin credit check that comes about a week after your closing! What other real estate company gives YOU money to shop with them!? We looked at many homes and got to meet several of the team members throughout the process. It was great to be able to schedule tours according to our schedule, which can often be a little crazy. With each home tour, Bob and the team would point out things that we should consider (but not in an overly pushy way) which was very helpful as first time homebuyers. I also really appreciated that Bob and the team got to know us and our ?must haves? ? this made each tour so much more personalized. Bob was extremely helpful throughout the 5-6 months that we worked with him. When we were ready to make an offer, Bob would get us the comps and any additional information we needed very quickly - allowing us to make informed decisions when making our offers. The first house we made an offer on, the sellers were less than cooperative, yet Bob remained persistent and thorough. And if it wasn't for him and our inspector's advice, we may have gotten stuck with a money pit disaster. But the most important part is that Bob always remained positive and fun! We really enjoyed the home tours and always looked forward to seeing Bob. We're very thankful for all his hard work, awesome advise, vast knowledge of homes, and his patience with us through this process. It can be stressful, but Bob definitely made it as painless as possible. And when it comes time for us to upgrade to a bigger home, Bob is going to be the first phone call we make.

We used several different online home search engines when we were deciding which home to purchase, and we found Redfin to be the most intuitive. We found a few condos we wanted to see in person, so contacted Redfin to set-up a showing. After looking at several home, we finally found the right one for us. The condo was listed on Monday morning, and we immediately let Redfin know that we wanted to see the new listing ASAP. We were able to get the only viewing appointment available that evening, and liked the home so much we made an offer that night. Our offer was accepted and we are moving into our new home in a few weeks. Redfin was great for us to work with because we knew what we wanted and were carefully tracking new listings. They were responsive to our requests for showings, but they did not go out of their way to identify other properties we might like. We didn't mind this because we preferred to look over the details of potential home online and wanted to select what was appealing to us ourselves - we didn't need any hand-holding, and appreciated that Redfin agents weren't at all pushy with properties we and quot;mightand quot; like. In addition to getting the home of our dreams, we are also getting a refund from Redfin since our property qualifies for their fantastic refund program, so we will be able to get several thousand dollars off our closing costs. It's truly a good deal.

If you are not familiar with the model, it is worth a visit to redfin.com. With Redfin, you do a lot of the legwork. You choose the properties that you would like to see, etc. The benefit is that some of the real estate commission is rebated to you after closing. My experience was certainly satisfactory based upon my understanding of the model. Chris Chesne, my agent, was good to have in my corner. He had an eye for properties and was able to bring things to my attention during tours. The only downside is that I was left to coordinate much of the activities necessary for closing: attorney, lender, home inspection, etc. I'm not sure that I'd do it again this way, but I certainly knew what I was getting myslef into ahead of time. Check out redfin. If the model appeals to you, I recommend their agents - particularly Chris Chesne.

My wife and I sold our home very quickly and wanted to fine a new home, a condo in Chicago preferably near downtown. The realtor who sold our place -- although to be honest we sold our place, he merely listed it -- was our logical first choice. He was quite unprofessional and we decided to look for a new agent/agency. We tried a couple of others but were always of the opinion that they were interested in their goal, collecting a commission by pushing for a sale. Perhaps the all or nothing approach to compensation pushes many realtors towards this attitude but we have found this attitude too frequently on other occasions when we were looking for a home. We had been using the Redfin website to look for homes but were hesitant to use Redfin as this agency as it is very unorthodox. Redfin gives money back to the home buyer! We thought they must skip on service. Quite the contrary: THEIR SERVICE WAS THE BEST as I will describe below. Alex Harried was our primary contact person at Redfin. He is young but is the consummate professional. He actually endeavors to help you reach your goal. He would point out flaws or other considerations such as the advantages or disadvantages of the neighborhood or condo association, unlike our previous realtor who tended to hype any property that we seemed remotely interested in. We looked at dozens of properties and made several offers which fell through. The first we were outbid on, the second we withdrew after a week with no response, the third was accepted but there was a renter who changed his mind about moving out on the promised date so we withdrew that offer as well. Throughout this process Alex was always upbeat and not upset about the deals falling through, never pressuring us to complete the deal. Our fourth offer was accepted and we were very pleased that the previous deals fell through. Alex handled the negotiations very professionally and we were very happy with the price. Alex recommended a great inspector who helped us with our decision to purchase the condo and even weeks later is still helping us with remodeling decisions. One week after closing we received a check for over four thousand dollars, about nine-tenths of one percent of the purchase price of the condo! Redfin PAYS YOU for the great service YOU RECEIVE!!