Redfin Homes for Sale & Rent Reviews

by Sick Of Matt B

So I had two homes for sale. I contacted a redfin agent I had talked to before named Jesse. Jesse or redfin doesn’t respect the customers time. Jesse kept not getting back to me so I had to request another agent honestly I forgot his name already. He was rude and condescending and really thought that I had to adhere to his schedule instead of us coordinating schedules together. He was very condescending and thought he was way too busy to talk to me, even though I had a bad experience with the previous realtor. At this point I had to go over the managers head Cecelia because she kept sending me very rude realtors, so I have to call their headquarters in Dallas and talk to a lady named Lucy, who is actually very nice but turned out to be kind of fake also. Since I can’t really explain why they were that way to me I can only speculate that it was racial but I really don’t know. All I know is that redfin is not a good company to work with. I guess with the percentage that they take, you get what you pay for, which is somebody who doesn’t care about you as a person at all.

by The Scott

It’s almost like RedfinHomes is actively trying to get users to not use Redfin. No matter how I “tune my recommendations,” I constantly get notifications for houses way, way outside my price range, in cities I’ve never searched for, etc. And I’m not even going to go into how it constantly resets the sort, map view, etc.

I do not get at all what the “Recommended” sort option is supposed to be showing me, but you seem set on forcing it on me regardless of what I do. Whatever it is, it’s not at all useful. I have to sort and re-sort again to actually see new properties. This isn’t Facebook, guys. You don’t need some stupid algorithm. You’re selling something. Just show me what I’m looking for in the order I ask for it. Why is that so hard?

What are you doing with all this nonsense, other than putting tons of roadblocks and annoyances in the way of your users? Maybe hire a UX expert or something because, man, this entire app is just littered with irritating little things that add up to an entirely repellent user experience.

by NCErinT

Redfin is my go to house hunting app... & I’ve been following the market for several (like 4) years now. I do not use the desktop version , so I cannot rate that portion. Overall, RedfinHomes is great. That being said, I am beyond frustrated with the “🔔 New Homes” tab (bottom, middle). Usually, this is a great feature that lists newly listed houses that Redfin believes you will be interested in. One of the reasons I used to like it was that it used to be a shortcut to finding back “that newly listed house” I was talking about so I could show it to them. However, my algorithm has somehow gotten off and it has started to show me homes far outside my price range & occasionally out of my area. There is no way that I can determine to fix &/or reset this. I can’t delete the house from the “New Homes” list nor does “x”ing the house out remove it from the list. It’s not like these houses are showing up in my actual searches, so why bother “x”ing them out? This has basically made the entire feature useless. I would love to reset it and have my “new home” tab back...

by Just Your Usual Reviewer

The functionality of RedfinHomes is pretty good, it works more smoothly and consistently than the web site which frequently fails to load maps or other features. The problem is RedfinHomes is locked into landscape mode forever! You’re going to spend hours with RedfinHomes and having to hold your iPad sideways to a couple of hours gets pretty uncomfortable. For the first time in several years as a heavy iPad user, I felt physical pain from being forced into a sideways grip. If you can get over that or you already customarily use your tablet in this way, with a kickstand or keyboard stand for example, you’ll adore how well RedfinHomes works. I’d gladly give this thing five stars if it didn’t cause me physical pain to use. Just don’t zoom in too much or RedfinHomes will for some unknown reason deluge you with already sold homes instead of homes for sale!

by Tigerlady6409

I love the layout of Redfin. I LOVE that it factors in things like tax and ins on the payment estimates. And if RedfinHomes would stop being glitchy, it would be a 5 star HANDS DOWN.

I’m looking in a crazy sellers market. House go up and HOURS later they’re pending. I need an app that allows me to SEE the houses. I can click on a house. I can look at the pictures, but since your last update, whether or not I can scroll down to see the amazing details is random AF. Before that, it liked to close out at random times. I can’t say if it’s still doing it, because I rage quit after the 4th or 5th swipe up to see the details.

For buyers, this is an amazing app. At least on IOS, be prepared for the glitches. I hope you work it out soon! I’ve have 7 weeks before we move and I need to find a house ASAP! I LOVE RedfinHomes enough to leave a review and hope you get it worked out!!

by Lovedarkness

Recent upgrades with more features to help narrow down search has been great and I appreciate how you can view listings pretty easily due to their large teams of people in place with very set roles (showing agents, scheduling coordinators, etc.) so they operate very efficiently. I don’t really care for the old school real estate style of one person being your go to and unable to show homes when it works for me.

With all that said, I do feel like their service is still somewhat lacking. The agents have never been very proactive about providing in depth analysis on housing prices for buyers or offer some strategic ways to make your offer stand out. They pretty much will just do what you say and, for the less experienced homebuyer, I think that puts you in a poor position to get your offer accepted. Also RedfinHomes IS SOOOOO SLOW. I cannot emphasize this any further but it is so painful I have started to transition my searches to trulia.

by Sabos

Redfin’s app is great at the basics, from searching and reviewing properties right on through scheduling a tour. But once you move beyond your first few searches and want to refine things, it falls down fast. For example…

Redfin caches the locations you’re searching and keeps serving up recommended properties in areas you’ve written off. RedfinHomes doesn’t tell you it’s doing this so you probably don't know to turn them off. And finding this isn’t intuitive. You might think you could training this feature but that isn’t easy either. And you can’t manually create a cache for a specific area.

When you reject a property, its removed from the map but still shows up in recommended properties and the feed. And creates notifications from status changes.

RedfinHomes uses your location, if turned on, as a starting point for searches and ignore the location you’re actually searching in. You need to keep adjusting manually.

RedfinHomes lumps all your favorite properties together and doesn’t allow you to group them by location like a building, town, or area.

These are just a few nits, but together they make for a very frustrating user experience. I still use Redfin from time to time, but this keeps me using other apps to look for properties.

by The Insidiator

RedfinHomes is so close to being truly useful, but it has several glaring flaws. Generally speaking, I still think it’s better than Zillow (which I find has data accuracy issues), Realtor and Coldwell Banker, but the problems below impair my experience as a buyer.

1) The automated ‘Recommendations’ ignore search settings like price range and city and there is no way to ‘tell’ the algorithm what you don’t want to see. Why show me a house that is 50% above my price range and in a city where I have NEVER CHECKED A LISTING? Training the recommendation algorithm could be implemented using a ‘swipe left’ to eliminate a recommendation. Right now, ‘swipe-left’ circles back through a property’s picture gallery. Not super helpful and a waste of a gesture.

2) There is a ‘commute time’ feature when viewing a listing, which is great, but no way to filter results by it. I would like to be able to specify a commute (a user could select whether that commute is house-to-work or house-to-train) and see ONLY properties within that commute. The others are irrelevant but keep showing up.

3) There is no way to exclude specific cities from results. I don’t want to see properties in cities I do not want to live in, no matter how far I zoom out.

Adding these features would make the Redfin app MUCH more useful for buyers like myself.

by LadyBugV1

I used to love RedfinHomes but am ready to drop it just because of the pricing sort. I get it has some glitches but I can live with those. THIS glitch, I simply can’t because it affects the entire experience of looking for a home. Each time the search refreshes itself, I have to remind RedfinHomes to apply the sort order I’ve already selected (Low to high pricing) because the sort is now in some Redfin preferred order. Of note - when you go to change the setting, it still says it’s in low to high pricing sort order (untrue) since the houses are not listed that way. To fix it, I have switch the order to high to low or any other sort, go back to RedfinHomes to “awaken” sort , then go back again to sort settings and switch to low to high and then back again to RedfinHomes for the sort to actually reset itself to my preferred sort. Using the map - Imagine you move your search 5 miles east - you have to repeat the above process again because the home results are no longer listed in low to high pricing. In one 15 min use of RedfinHomes , I have to repeat this insane reawaken and reset sort order several times! It tells me the designers don’t actually use their app. Incredibly annoying especially since it used to work properly a while back!! FIX IT please!!

by Aggiechad2005

I like how quickly Redfin updates. We’ve known the status several times before our Realtor because of this. I also like how you can opt out of seeing a house pop up on searches over and over. I only wish there were a few more options and that they were all immediately available by the heart icon without needing to open the listing to “X” out. Something along the lines of the two that Redfin already offers “love it”, “hate it” and then add an “eh, this may need a second look” icon would be great.

Also since the recent update I am not able to view the shared favorites which is frustrating. Though I can still see the comments left on my favorites. Even still this is my preferred app as we navigate through house hunting. Easy to use and updates super fast! Thanks!

by SapphireHearts

I used to love RedfinHomes but now I’m starting to get very frustrated. A year ago I was looking for house in another state but ended up moving June 19 to a different state. Today is May 2020 and I’m helping a friend look for a house. I have tried everything to stop getting updates on houses from the first state but nothing will stop them from showing in the update feed. I have emailed support but they are zero help and tell me to unsubscribe to the email. I’ve said 3 times it’s not through email it’s in RedfinHomes . Anyway on to the next issue. My friend and I are connected as co-borrowers so we can share our favorites and use the comment section. Doesn’t work! It shows her name but she can’t see my comments and I can’t see hers. I get emails that show her comments but nothing under the comment section or in the shared favorites of RedfinHomes. I don’t even see the houses she has saved. RedfinHomes used to be the best and now it’s gone to crap. I’m really sad because a year ago I loved it.

by Hackajack46

I’ve been a long-time user of the redfin app. I think it’s a tremendous tool. But the fact that they do not allow you to add real estate taxes as a filter is beyond comprehension. I can’t tell you how much time I waste looking at listings only to find out the taxes are incredibly high (especially here in Illinois) and I just have to keep looking because the taxes put the listing outside outside my budget.

I submitted a improvement request a couple years ago but obviously nothing ever happened. I just don’t understand why you can filter by so many different categories, but one of the most important items like taxes (which is a defined MLS numeric field so I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to add it) remains unavailable after all these years. It’s the same issue on their website. Come on Redfin. One of your web development guys could probably figure out how to add this filter in just a week or so. It’s been ten years. Make it happen!

by Blackavar015

To the developer: can you please make it more difficult to “unheart” favorites? I’ve now had multiple instances of accidentally “unhearting” favorites while scrolling through them. The heart is located right where a right-handed person would naturally scroll when still trying to be able to see the picture list. Because I’m searching four counties and over multiple months, I can’t always remember exactly where each house is located, particularly if it’s a new favorite. And searching by street name (if I remember it) is ineffectual. There are then literally hundreds of houses that I have to individually search back through to find the favorite. Maybe remove the “unheartable” heart from the scrolling list (so that you have to click on the entry to get to the clickable heart)? When it’s on our favorites list, it’s not like having that heart there adds anything. Or add a “are you sure” pop up? Otherwise, RedfinHomes has been awesome in helping me keep track of the market as I get ready to purchase. Thanks!

by Elliot Haney

I think this is by far the best real estate app available, but there are a few bugs in recent updates that are very frustrating to work with. 1.) RedfinHomes continues for forget my saved commuter routes, which is one of the best features of RedfinHomes, but recently, when I get into RedfinHomes , 9 out of 10 times, there are no saved commutes. 2.) sold prices almost always reflect the listing price, and to actually see what a home sold for, you have to scroll down to the pricing history to see what it actually sold for. This seems to even out after a few days, but I have instant notifications set for a reason! 3.) the Redfin estimate is essentially useless. It’s usually within $2-3k of whatever the list price is, and in my market, it’s proved to be entirely useless as even an estimate. My Redfin agent would estimate a home would go $50k over ask, while RedfinHomes based estimate suggested just about $2k over. When it sold? $48k over ask. Long story short, don’t even look at the estimate!

by AV1080

Edit:(they listened!! Thanks for putting the driving times back in RedfinHomes . Can’t overstate how great that feature is. Back to 5 stars)

Why in the world would you remove the driving times from RedfinHomes in this latest release?!?? That was arguably one of the best features. It still shows online so maybe it was unintentional or is simply a bug. PLEASE BRING IT BACK!!!

(Thanks for the dev response but clicking driving directions to launch google maps is pointless. I want to see the driving times to multiple places, none of which are where I live or am situated currently. Still hoping that feature is put back in the next release. )

by Rich Richie

A friend referred me to RedfinHomes and I love it! We were looking for a home in Portland, OR and used the filters to narrow our search. The alerts are helpful when a new listing is added. The home details and photos are extremely useful and we benefited by seeing the estimated monthly payments and taxes. Also we used a Redfin agent to help us purchase our home. She was helpful, knowledgeable and friendly. All and all the house hunting and buying experience on Redfin is seamless and easy. I continue to use RedfinHomes to see new listings, check the state of the housing market in my neighborhood and compare similar new listings with our home.

by Kara Dv

Please add lot size to the thumbnail view. Also please add a sort for lot size in descending order. Some people don’t care about anything but the lot possibility. It’s very cumbersome to search in that case.

Also- open house list should be super easy and not require a Redfin agent to be contacted just to glance at a property. Every weekend there should be a suggested Redfin adventure map, plotting a driving map to potential properties to explore. With the incentive for using the Redfin agent on each property. Push notifications could also notify you if there is an open house nearby that fits your search criteria. We have explored areas in the car and not found it easy to get from one open house to the other, driving. App needs to take the open house hours in to account and suggest a route to see all within the “draw” area and search criteria.

by Abhi K.

I have been using Redfin for a while now (more than a year), and have been happy to get updates and notifications regarding houses/real-estate properties, based on my filters.

One issue that bothers me though, is this: I have set Redfin to not work over Cellular network; now, if I open a notification while on Cellular network, RedfinHomes opens to a blank page with a popup; at this point I lose the notification and the page, even if I switch to a WiFi network. I think it would be useful, if Redfin let me “pulldown” on the page to reload it, after having switched the network (if all of this is even possible).

But this does not mean I don’t like RedfinHomes . It works great, and provides me with awesome information about the properties that interest me, allowing me to make well-informed decisions and choices.

by Lovelysvalentine

I usually don’t write reviews but RedfinHomes is one I enjoy using, its very easy to navigate and understand, you can “heart” houses you love and come back to them to determine which ones you want to view. They also have a function that allows you to contact the realtors and see when they have open houses. It shows when a house you are looking for is already sold or pending so you don’t waste your time. It gives you estimates of pay and has filters to determine what your looking in a house. I’ve used many apps like this to look for houses but this is by far my favorite one and it is now the only one I use. The only thing I wished RedfinHomes had is a place for the ones you “X” out In the same way they have a place for the ones you “heart” I dislike that I have to scroll through houses I’ve already looked at and don’t want to see. Even with that RedfinHomes is a 5 out of 5!

by ColoMomof4

Everyone searching for a home knows about the other 2 RE app (Tr & Zi - which are both owned by the same company). I’ve used both of those apps extensively in my searching. They each have a few features/ available data that the other does not. So in order to get complete info on any given home (taxes, school info, street view of home, sometimes even the written description, etc) - you would have to go to both back & forth between both sites/apps.

I’ve only recently learned about Redfin and the Redfin app. Much better! Redfin has ALL of the features/ available data in one place. It’s easy to use in either list or map format. And it seems to be more current as to when homes go on & off the market. I deleted the other 2 apps and am now using RF exclusively. Happy Home Hunting!

by Sm.007

Redfin is a good app. Simple, transparent, and with good filters to narrow down real estate search. It falls short of a 5-star app because of two strange behaviors:
1. It doesn’t let you view all the homes for sale in a city based on Great Schools rankings. You have to zoom into a very small area for school-based filtering to apply. Until then, the filter simply doesn’t work. The way I like to do property searches is to look at an entire city (or custom area), filter on Great Schools ranking 8+, and then play around with the resulting options. RedfinHomes doesn’t let you operate that way.
2. In select cities such as New York City, it requires that you re-enter your password to view the complete listing. Even after re-entering, RedfinHomes takes you back to the restricted version of the listing as if you still haven’t entered the password. You need to kill RedfinHomes and re-open it immediately to see the unrestricted listing. It’s a pretty annoying bug that affects me almost every session.

by ToriLovesSoftware

RedfinHomes really helped me find our dream home. It helped us understand the local market. I love how you can pull a report on what houses were listed for vs what they actually sold for with days on the market. Zillow does not offer this capability. It helped us understand how to negotiate our offer to purchase a home by including enough time to sell our current home. I also love the updates on how our home is appreciating.
They only throng they could do better is the estimates on current value. I feel like this is too conservative because I have seen the Redfin value of 2.0m and then the home is listed for 2.6m and sells within a week all cash offer. I have seen a few of these examples.

by Abhi5641

I am buying my first home through Redfin and I always had this doubt on how the whole process is different from hiring a realtor, well the answer is simple, if you pick a realtor you will only be able to see choices they send us, and it’s more painful to have them beside you taking from one house to another and the more house you see the less patient they get.. however with Redfin the best thing I noticed was I can search all the homes listed by any realtor for free through their app and all I have to do is choose the location where I need my house and all lists pulls up automatically, once you select the house you will have a person from Redfin who will take you for the tour and they don’t get tired at all.. second best thing is Having Erick grande beside you, a person whom you can rely on and he has options for any troubles.. saying this Redfin provides you a deal money that you can use at the end of closing, I would recommend RedfinHomes to anyone I know or would recommend to any buyers who had trouble buying their dream house

by IrishLuck87

We had been house searching for months and I had EVERY other app on my phone with search notifications enabled. I had heard Redfin was the fastest so I downloaded it as well and saved a search with notifications set up. RedfinHomes is the reason I was notified within minutes of my dream home coming on the market. The other apps had a few hour delay before I received the same notification from them. Because of Redfin notifying us so quickly we were able to schedule a prompt showing with our agent and were the first to submit an offer in a very competitive market. We just closed on the house. THANK YOU Redfin! If you download more than one app I would recommend this one and Estately.