Redfin fined, forced to shut down review blogs

Just days after the "60 Minutes" segment on real estate commissions and Redfin, the Seattle-based brokerage company publicly announces that it has been fined $50,000 by the Northwest MLS over its blogging sites that conduct in-person reviews of properties for sale. The sites violate an MLS policy that prohibits brokers from advertising each others' listings.

The NWMLS has not returned Inman News' phone calls.

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman says the industry at large should be concerned about some of these rules that prohibit brokers from displaying listings alongside other information (though he points out that the Redfin reviews in question were located on separate sites from the MLS listings). Kelman says he feels that in a Web 2.0 world where data is constantly being mashed up in new and innovative ways that consumers have come to expect this in real estate. He says the MLS will become "a lonely island of information that's overlooked" if the industry doesn't come to grips with what consumers want.

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