Redfin is skeptical about the flat-fee model, although it described Landian as “a brother in arms, eager like us to give consumers a better deal.” The 18-year-old company once tried a similar model, and explains why it didn’t work:
“When we tried this before in a fiercely competitive housing market, we struggled to win on behalf of customers the offer-writing agent hadn’t met, for listings that agent hadn’t seen,” a spokesperson said. “We also learned that when customers want to call on the expertise of one person, morning, noon, and night, you have to pay that person very, very well. For now, we believe we can offer homebuyers the best value by using Redfin.com to eliminate the single largest cost of being an agent, which is finding customers, and by pairing the industry’s best agents with lending and title services.”