Will Redfin’s Giant Team Take Your Market Share?

By Tiana Baur

Redfin’s stock dropped 5.45 percent last week when Compass announced their plan of world domination. Although, it was primarily due to their poor Q3 earnings release, falling short of analyst estimates, and we’ll go ahead and mention the fact they currently only serve 0.71 percent of the U.S. housing market… BUT they’re still Redfin. They’re still a shark in a sea of minnows, constantly posing a threat.

In real estate, agent teams are becoming kind of a big deal. In fact, there are now 35,000 to 50,000 agent teams across the U.S., with the majority of them having two to nine team members belonging to them. These numbers are only growing, with 37 percent of teams formed one to three years ago and 26 percent of teams formed one year ago.

Working in teams is way more productive and provides additional benefits, such as:

• Extra lead generation
• Process and vision to building a bigger brand and operations that can scale
• Mentoring new agents in the market
• Collaboration and communication through the different roles
• Combining different talents and skills
• A more diversified client demography and audience

What does this have to do with Redfin? Well, they’re basically a GIANT agent team. Instead of having a bunch of independent contractors on their hands, they have agents on staff and have a website that generates lots of leads for their agents. They built a website with tons of cool, shiny technology and features to attract lots of eyeballs and leads. Sometimes, they even give leads to agents at other brokerages, like a team that generates leads and distributes them to their team members.

To quote a popular interview done with an industry influencer this past summer, “Redfin is not a brokerage; it is an agent team. Let that sink in for a moment. Redfin is not in the recruiting and retention business like 99.99% of brokerages are today. They could care less about recruiting the superstar elite agents. Redfin is in the business of helping people buy and sell homes — just like an agent team. They have employee agents who must use Redfin’s systems, must follow Redfin’s procedures, and the people they work with are not their clients, but Redfin’s clients — just like an agent team. And just like an agent team must have a superstar lead-generation lead agent, Redfin has one… in its website and mobile app.”

If you didn’t think of Redfin this way before, now might be a good time to do so. Although they had less than fruitful earnings this quarter, according to GeekWire, they have pushed out a few new products and have a new speedy offer-writing software they’re going to start rolling out in select cities called Redfin Fast Offers. So, who knows what will happen. But a powerful giant like Redfin isn’t going to give up without a fight and your market share is hardly safe in an environment where Compass, Redfin, and others are constantly brewing up their next attack.