Daily Archives: June 5, 2006  How Red is the Redfin Fin?  In my
Techcrunch party write-up the other day, I pondered a bit about
the profitability of the various startups around. I’ve chatted a
bit more with some friends about Redfin in particular, and how
well their model of selling houses online is going to fare. I
ran across this blog post, actually written just before last
week’s party, which dissects some of the numbers quoted in this
Seattle PI article about Redfin’s sales to-date. Whichever
numbers are correct; 40 homes at $18 million ($180k commission),
or 13 homes at $7 million ($70k commission), I think they’re
fairly impressive for having their direct service running for
just 5 months (and still at just 25 employees).  The PI article
mentions that ZipRealty sold $900 million worth of homes in the
first three months of the year (with a shocking 1,400 agents!).
Applying Redfin’s “measly” 1% commission to that and we’re
talking $9 million in income. Yeah, yeah, so what do all these
numbers mean? I’m no