Redfin's Sweet Digs Chronicles Local Listings in the Bay Area
Redfin's Sweet Digs launches in the San Francisco Bay Area at exactly 12:01am today, according to the pre-press release sent to me by Cynthia Pang. Sweet Digs chronicles the Bay Area's local housing market - and will be cousins to the new local residential /community oriented sites Localism , MyHouseKey.org and the new My-Currency. In Seattle, Sweet Digs uniquely reviewed listed houses, mostly on the saccharine side (I suppose they didn't want to antagonize the listing agents) by Redfin folks... here are some archived examples. Apparently in the Bay Area, the authors are hired mavens who were apparently given instructions not to pull punches.
I'm looking forward to reading the more candid reviews in the Bay Area... seven authors apparently will post 30 per
A suggestion - Each three paragraph house review can in aggregate describe the neighbohoods they reside within. Each review should be tagged in a mashup either on the Redfin listings search map or on its own separate map. Buyers focusing on certain neighborhoods would find this valuable.
Technorati Tags: sweet digs, redfin, real estate marketing, listing,
One point here I'd like to correct is the number of posts expected to be published. We expect our current seven member team to publish around 30 posts per week, not 30 per day.
Note taken on Seattle reviews being a little softer lately, although the posts from the past few days have been anything but.
Good suggestion. The blog does need to be integrated with the search experience in a more cohesive manner. I hate how it's just a footnote at the bottom of our site right now.
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Thank you Bahn, corrections made... actually I don't mind reading reviews that focus on a home's nicer features... your Seattle authors write well and I'm sure your Bay Area corps was also picked based on that criteria. So now your readers are all looking forward to the new trash talking Sweet @$%@! Digs...
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Pat,
This is unrelated to this post, but I just wanted to thank you for helping me get www.thesfconnection.net started. With your help, the blog has been getting a good stream of interested parties that want to learn about the neighborhoods and new developments in San Francisco.
You are a great asset to the blogging community! Have a great weekend...J
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Wow James, thank you... made my day...
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So I realize that it is still early in the game, but how is it going with Redfin down in the bay area? Are they getting a lot of attention from the media, or has it been a quiet start? Any complaints to the MLS yet?
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Hi - I've asked my friends at Redfin to respond to your comment...
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Hi Nickie,
Redfin is doing well in San Francisco. Like any new business we had a "quiet start," but we are setting new offer records each week. We even hired a new agent to help us keep up.
Are you asking if we have received any MLS complaints about the bloggers? We have heard nothing but rave reviews from our customers, but I'm sure there are some listing agents that don't care for it. Our goal is to give customers access to all the information about a listing to help them shop for a home and this is another way to do that. Not everyone has time to go to open houses so we are doing it for them, and giving honest and objective reviews.
I'm not sure if that was exactly what you were asking, so feel free to follow up here, or e-mail me directly at cynthia (dot) pang (at) redfin (dot) com.
Cynthia
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