According to a report on TechCrunch, real estate site Redfin has launched its own home-price estimate tool, taking on Zillow’s Zestimate. According to Redfin, whose stated mission is “to redefine real estate in the customer’s favor,” their new tool, Redfin Estimate, will be data-driven, and a “more accurate” home valuation tool. Their site will use the same data as real estate agents and claims that “unlike other appraisal estimators, the Redfin Estimate looks at 100% of the homes on the MLS to calculate your property’s current market value — so you get an accurate online estimate, instantly.”
Interestingly, TechCrunch asked Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman why they didn’t launch this tool sooner:
“…Turns out, because Redfin is a broker, it’s bound by different rules than listing services like Zillow. It gets access to the data from the multiple listing services (MLSs), but in return, it has to stick to the rules of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which (through a series of arcane policies) basically governs the majority or MLSs (there are also a number of independent MLSs, too, though). One of these rules Redfin was bound to was that it couldn’t use the data to build a tool for automated home price estimates. The NAR finally did away with this rule a few months ago, so now Redfin is free to launch this service.”
