patrick.net

Just used Redfin to close on a home purchase today--wincing in advance, I know my patrick.net reading peers are going to say we're crazy to buy. As mentioned in an earlier post, we think we got a good deal on an estate (earlier thought to be probate) sale that needs a lot of work. With past and current landlord troubles, we think moving will improve our quality of life, even if we lose in the near term on a purely financial basis.

The Redfin team did a great job helping us out, very flexible in scheduling house tours, leading us through a very complicated negotiation about who would pay for deferred maintenance, and calming the nerves of the seller's agent when the mortgage process took us well past our initial finance contingency removal date.

Actually we found the house with a Redfin agent the weekend after our realtor fired us! She thought we "weren't being realistic" having been looking for several months and having expressed some doubt about whether we were a significant priority for her. We had also told her we simply hadn't seen anything that would persuade us to leave our decent rental.

It also feels good to keep half the commission the realtor would have taken and give the other half to Redfin, who provided us with useful service (even if I'd prefer they'd get a bit less commission, in truth). Not having bought a house before, we weren't quite game to hire a real estate attorney and do it ourselves.

I think that if a professional is acting in an honest, ethical manner to provide the best service to their clients they have nothing to fear from their "work" being made public............oh now I get it.

doctorowner(your gonna have to change your name trigger). Congrats on taking action. I always look at it this way. In capital allocation it is very rare I will pull the trigger perfectly. I go for better than average(maybe I aim to low). In 10 years look back at your trigger point. Of course the hard part comes in if you see prices dropping around you. I hope you hit a bullseye

Doco:
(I shortened it, in the tradition of O.co (because typing that extra "m" was so damn taxing on my system...)

I'm a houseowner. Not a big fan of the realtors, but at least you didn't pay full commission. These days, you're damned if you do buy and damned if you don't. It's a personal choice.

Congrats, hope it's all you wanted it to be.