Dwelling on the dollars
Redfin's new service now helps San Antonio home sellers score quick cash
Real estate brokerage Redfin is opening the door for homeowners in the San Antonio area to get all-cash offers for their houses.
Through its RedfinNow program, the brokerage will a buy a home directly from a seller without the need to prepare it for showings or open houses, and with the ability to pick the move-out date. For a home that qualifies for Redfin, a seller can get a cash offer within 48 hours and wrap up the deal within seven days.
“RedfinNow makes home-selling simple so you can focus on what’s next in your life. Skip the repairs, showings, and uncertainty of a traditional home sale and move on your timeline,” Kari Ledgerwood, Austin and San Antonio market manager for RedfinNow, says in a release. “Sellers love the convenience and certainty of an instant offer, and the service is especially popular with move-up buyers who are able to use the cash from their first home to buy their next.”
The company does charge a service fee of 7 percent off the sale price. A full-service listing through a Redfin agent in the San Antonio area comes with a 1.5 percent listing fee in addition to a 3 percent commission for the buyer’s agent.
Aside from San Antonio, RedfinNow is available in Austin, Dallas, Denver, and Southern California. The Seattle-based Redfin launched the service in 2017, and in the second quarter of this year, RedfinNow generated revenue of $39.9 million.
Real estate companies that purchase homes directly from sellers is a growing trend and include big-name companies like Zillow, Opendoor, Offerpad, Knock, and Keller Williams.
“Though they may not be right for everyone, a convenient and hassle-free sale is worth the price of admission for certain buyers,” Forbes.com says of direct-offer deals.
Direct-offer buyers charge sellers a “convenience fee” of 6 percent to 9.5 percent, with some of them tacking on fees of 1 percent or more that typically are paid by buyers when a sale closes, according to an August 2019 report from real estate data provider Collateral Analytics. Overall, the cost to a seller in a direct-offer deal ranges from 13 percent to 15 percent, the report says, compared with the typical 5 percent to 9 percent in combined costs for the seller and buyer through a traditional sale.