Reality is that in the last years everything we can buy and sell has moved online except real estate. But especially this is a category that touches everyone. 68% of Americans are Homeowners, 5M homes are sold every year – it is the largest undisrupted market worth 1,6T$ annually. Despite that it is completely fragmented plus processes are inconvenient and expensive. Redfin intends to disrupt that.
“Redfin is a technology-powered residential real estate company, redefining real estate in the consumer’s favor in a commission-driven industry. We do this by integrating every step of the home buying and selling process and pairing our own agents with our own technology, creating a service that is faster, better and costs less. We offer brokerage, iBuying, mortgage, and title services, and we also run the country’s #1 real estate brokerage search site, offering a host of online tools to consumers, including the Redfin Estimate. We represent people buying and selling homes in over 90 markets in the United States and Canada. Since our launch in 2006, we have saved our customers over $800 million and we’ve helped them buy or sell more than 235,000 homes worth more than $115 billion.”
Source: Redfin
An appointed Redfin agent, that is acquainted in the particular area the buyer is looking for a house, supports the customer in every step of the way. From the neighborhood to the street, the Redfin platform always tries to accommodate the agent in taking decisions for the buyer. It is even possible to get a complete virtual house tour. There is no hassle with connecting to a bank and applying for a loan with them, this process is fully automated with Redfin Mortgage & Title. The closing of a deal can be long and stressful but Redfin cuts the time dramatically. All those services, that normally come at an extra cost, are way cheaper than the regular 3% fee. Redfin only takes 1,5%.
On average 76,6% of the listings are closed within 90 days, compared to the industry average of 75,1%. This time disparity can immediately be converted into a material advantage. Approximately $1,900 is the average difference between the sale and list prices of Redfin listings versus that of comparable listings by other brokerages. This leads to Redfin selling homes faster and for more money – so there is no reason to sell the traditional way.
Next to the already mentioned Brokerage way of buying and selling houses, Redfin offers their Concierge service and even the full package as RedfinNow (iBuying). The Concierge service deals with fixing up the customers house to achieve a higher selling price. Redfin ups their commission to 2,5% for this deal.
iBuying is the easiest way to selling a house because it is outright bought by Redfin. This extreme convenience comes with a price tag of a 7% service fee.
Redfin has started out as a brokerage platform with agents, but their new offer, Redfin Direct, intends to eliminate the agent. It allows buyers to make an Redfin listing on their own. Buyers use the step by step online platform to put together an offer on their own, they are in charge to negotiate with the seller and finalize the deal. Every stage is supported by the Redfin platform.
Redfin Direct Access lets buyers unlock the door with their phone and tour properties on their own schedule, without an agent. This feature is available from the front door by tapping to unlock on your phone. That allows better planning because no scheduling is needed with another person.
These above mentioned initatives show how they will act in the future.
After a listing appears on the American real estate portal MLS (“MLS = Multiple Listing Service”), more than 90% of the offerings will appear on Redfin. The machine learning generated listing recommendation on Redfin’s website achieves a six-time higher click through rate compared to listing based on customer zones saved search criteria. About 80% of the home tours are scheduled automatically and can be done at first virtually.
Redfin has a higher repeat rate on their services than other brokerages. 59% of the Buyers are using Redfin as well to sell the home they have bought. This is supported by the deal that offers the customers to only pay a low 1% listing fee when they also buy with Redfin within the next 12 months.
For agents, Redfin offers about double of the median agent pay. On average Redfin agents close more than three times as many deals plus they are way more likely to stay with Redfin than the typical brokerage.
This adds up to the best benefits for both the customers and the employees and gives Redfin a great moat within their business segment.
More Sales and more purchases enable a larger geographical footprint which opens up getting cheaper capital and scale on the value added services (e.g. their Renovation services). Passed-on savings boost demand and increase offers.
Source: Redfin Press Release
Source: Redfin Press Release
Only the CEO holds a mentionable amount of stock (1,8%).
Glenn Kelman has served as President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our board of directors since March 2006 after serving in a number of executive-level roles since 2005. Before joining us, Mr. Kelman was the co-founder of Plumtree Software, Inc., a provider of enterprise portal software products, where he served as Vice President of Marketing and Product Management from 1997 to 2004.
Scott Nagel (President of Real Estate Operations) leads real estate operations at Redfin, with responsibility for brokerage and partner revenue, recruiting, and training, and is President of Title Forward, a Redfin owned title company. Prior to Redfin, he was a managing director at LexisNexis, with profit-and-loss responsibility for an $80 million-business. Prior to that, Scott served as vice president of strategy and client operations at Applied Discovery, a successful legal services software start-up.
Chris Nielsen has served as our Chief Financial Officer since June 2013. Before joining us, Mr. Nielsen served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Zappos.com, an online shoe and clothing subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., from 2010 to June 2013. Prior to that, Mr. Nielsen served as Vice President, Home & Garden, and in various finance roles, at Amazon.com, Inc., an electronic commerce and cloud computing company, from 2003 to 2010.
Source: Redfin Investor Relations
Moving trends take all of these points and solidify themselves in the shift from living in the huge population states like California, New York or New Jersey to the upcoming, younger and dynamic cities in the south. States like Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona profit the most.
Revenue is split in two segments. Services consist of the Brokerage Services and Mortgage & Title (this will be one segment in future). Product revenue shows the iBuying business.
The great thing with not having all the eggs in one basket is that costumers that want to use RedfinNow, but did not want to accept the instant offer, can be converted to the higher margin brokerage services. With the reduction of the iBuying business, revenue has shrunk, so comparing the company now with itself pre-pandemic is flawed.
Redfin was close to gross-profitability with its iBuying business in Q1. The long term goal is a 5% gross margin for their product revenue. Efforts have stopped completely in the first months of the pandemic, so it will take until 2021 for it to reach pre-pandemic levels. But even in Q3 Product gross margin only was -7% (inventory of 19 houses in the beginning of Q3), so the taken efforts to scale down were very effective. The Services gross margin has reached 44% in Q3.
Q3 has seen a huge net income of 34M $ which was fueled by surging brokerage margins and down scaling of the product segment.
On a competitive side, companies like the recently SPAC´ed (“SPAC = Special Purpose Acquisition Company; A possible way to go public and be listed on a stock-exchange) Opendoor or the real-estate search engine Zillow, both are important players in this field.
Opendoor is fully focused on iBuying, it holds 70% of the market share. It has not merged with its SPAC so its financial history does not warrant than an investment yet.
Zillow has already hit its break even point with their iBuying and those profits will only grow. They also offer a Mortgage and Title service.
The iBuying market itself is still in its early stage of development and building regional networks takes a long time. By 2023 the TAM (Total Addressable Market) will double itself. None of the competitors has huge market shares if you include the full TAM(with traditional players). The pandemic hit every one of them, and they all have scaled down their efforts at first, this means inventories have hit a low. But they will come back as fast as possible.
If you only look at the high growth and high margin Services, a TTM Price/Sales-Ratio (“TTM = Trailing twelve months”) of beneath 10 (6,7) gives a great upside. Everything which the Products- segment will contribute in the future is not at all priced in, although the mentioned trend and the moonshot margin goal give a clear winning market division.
If you think of, that the iBuying-segment will return to old strength, fueled by the great brokerage disruption, this is the stock to achieve an above average return. Redfin is the better choice than Opendoor, because they sell the full package. In addition it’s the better choice than Zillow because the market has yet to realize its strong earnings power.
Our recommendation: This stock is a clear buy. Use sell-offs or weak market days for buying in or averaging up.
The author currently does NOT hold a position in the mentioned stock, but intends to buy shares of the mentioned stock shortly after the release of this article. The mentioned company does NOT compensate the author or the publisher of this website.
This post is not an investment advice and should not be treated as one. Please contact your local bank or broker for financial advice.
Reality is that in the last years everything we can buy and sell has moved online except real estate. But especially this is a category that touches everyone. 68% of Americans are Homeowners, 5M homes are sold every year - it is the largest undisrupted market worth 1,6T$ annually. Despite that it is completely fragmented plus processes are inconvenient and expensive. Redfin intends to disrupt that.
“Redfin is a technology-powered residential real estate company, redefining real estate in the consumer's favor in a commission-driven industry. We do this by integrating every step of the home buying and selling process and pairing our own agents with our own technology, creating a service that is faster, better and costs less. We offer brokerage, iBuying, mortgage, and title services, and we also run the country's #1 real estate brokerage search site, offering a host of online tools to consumers, including the Redfin Estimate. We represent people buying and selling homes in over 90 markets in the United States and Canada. Since our launch in 2006, we have saved our customers over $800 million and we've helped them buy or sell more than 235,000 homes worth more than $115 billion.”
Source: Redfin
An appointed Redfin agent, that is acquainted in the particular area the buyer is looking for a house, supports the customer in every step of the way. From the neighborhood to the street, the Redfin platform always tries to accommodate the agent in taking decisions for the buyer. It is even possible to get a complete virtual house tour. There is no hassle with connecting to a bank and applying for a loan with them, this process is fully automated with Redfin Mortgage & Title. The closing of a deal can be long and stressful but Redfin cuts the time dramatically. All those services, that normally come at an extra cost, are way cheaper than the regular 3% fee. Redfin only takes 1,5%.
On average 76,6% of the listings are closed within 90 days, compared to the industry average of 75,1%. This time disparity can immediately be converted into a material advantage. Approximately $1,900 is the average difference between the sale and list prices of Redfin listings versus that of comparable listings by other brokerages. This leads to Redfin selling homes faster and for more money - so there is no reason to sell the traditional way.
Next to the already mentioned Brokerage way of buying and selling houses, Redfin offers their Concierge service and even the full package as RedfinNow (iBuying). The Concierge service deals with fixing up the customers house to achieve a higher selling price. Redfin ups their commission to 2,5% for this deal.
iBuying is the easiest way to selling a house because it is outright bought by Redfin. This extreme convenience comes with a price tag of a 7% service fee.
Redfin has started out as a brokerage platform with agents, but their new offer, Redfin Direct, intends to eliminate the agent. It allows buyers to make an Redfin listing on their own. Buyers use the step by step online platform to put together an offer on their own, they are in charge to negotiate with the seller and finalize the deal. Every stage is supported by the Redfin platform.
Redfin Direct Access lets buyers unlock the door with their phone and tour properties on their own schedule, without an agent. This feature is available from the front door by tapping to unlock on your phone. That allows better planning because no scheduling is needed with another person.
These above mentioned initatives show how they will act in the future.
After a listing appears on the American real estate portal MLS ("MLS = Multiple Listing Service"), more than 90% of the offerings will appear on Redfin. The machine learning generated listing recommendation on Redfin’s website achieves a six-time higher click through rate compared to listing based on customer zones saved search criteria. About 80% of the home tours are scheduled automatically and can be done at first virtually.
Redfin has a higher repeat rate on their services than other brokerages. 59% of the Buyers are using Redfin as well to sell the home they have bought. This is supported by the deal that offers the customers to only pay a low 1% listing fee when they also buy with Redfin within the next 12 months.
For agents, Redfin offers about double of the median agent pay. On average Redfin agents close more than three times as many deals plus they are way more likely to stay with Redfin than the typical brokerage.
This adds up to the best benefits for both the customers and the employees and gives Redfin a great moat within their business segment.
More Sales and more purchases enable a larger geographical footprint which opens up getting cheaper capital and scale on the value added services (e.g. their Renovation services). Passed-on savings boost demand and increase offers.
Source: Redfin Press Release
Source: Redfin Press Release
Only the CEO holds a mentionable amount of stock (1,8%).
Glenn Kelman has served as President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our board of directors since March 2006 after serving in a number of executive-level roles since 2005. Before joining us, Mr. Kelman was the co-founder of Plumtree Software, Inc., a provider of enterprise portal software products, where he served as Vice President of Marketing and Product Management from 1997 to 2004.
Scott Nagel (President of Real Estate Operations) leads real estate operations at Redfin, with responsibility for brokerage and partner revenue, recruiting, and training, and is President of Title Forward, a Redfin owned title company. Prior to Redfin, he was a managing director at LexisNexis, with profit-and-loss responsibility for an $80 million-business. Prior to that, Scott served as vice president of strategy and client operations at Applied Discovery, a successful legal services software start-up.
Chris Nielsen has served as our Chief Financial Officer since June 2013. Before joining us, Mr. Nielsen served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Zappos.com, an online shoe and clothing subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., from 2010 to June 2013. Prior to that, Mr. Nielsen served as Vice President, Home & Garden, and in various finance roles, at Amazon.com, Inc., an electronic commerce and cloud computing company, from 2003 to 2010.
Source: Redfin Investor Relations
Moving trends take all of these points and solidify themselves in the shift from living in the huge population states like California, New York or New Jersey to the upcoming, younger and dynamic cities in the south. States like Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona profit the most.
Revenue is split in two segments. Services consist of the Brokerage Services and Mortgage & Title (this will be one segment in future). Product revenue shows the iBuying business.
The great thing with not having all the eggs in one basket is that costumers that want to use RedfinNow, but did not want to accept the instant offer, can be converted to the higher margin brokerage services. With the reduction of the iBuying business, revenue has shrunk, so comparing the company now with itself pre-pandemic is flawed.
Redfin was close to gross-profitability with its iBuying business in Q1. The long term goal is a 5% gross margin for their product revenue. Efforts have stopped completely in the first months of the pandemic, so it will take until 2021 for it to reach pre-pandemic levels. But even in Q3 Product gross margin only was -7% (inventory of 19 houses in the beginning of Q3), so the taken efforts to scale down were very effective. The Services gross margin has reached 44% in Q3.
Q3 has seen a huge net income of 34M $ which was fueled by surging brokerage margins and down scaling of the product segment.
On a competitive side, companies like the recently SPAC´ed ("SPAC = Special Purpose Acquisition Company; A possible way to go public and be listed on a stock-exchange) Opendoor or the real-estate search engine Zillow, both are important players in this field.
Opendoor is fully focused on iBuying, it holds 70% of the market share. It has not merged with its SPAC so its financial history does not warrant than an investment yet.
Zillow has already hit its break even point with their iBuying and those profits will only grow. They also offer a Mortgage and Title service.
The iBuying market itself is still in its early stage of development and building regional networks takes a long time. By 2023 the TAM (Total Addressable Market) will double itself. None of the competitors has huge market shares if you include the full TAM(with traditional players). The pandemic hit every one of them, and they all have scaled down their efforts at first, this means inventories have hit a low. But they will come back as fast as possible.
If you only look at the high growth and high margin Services, a TTM Price/Sales-Ratio ("TTM = Trailing twelve months") of beneath 10 (6,7) gives a great upside. Everything which the Products- segment will contribute in the future is not at all priced in, although the mentioned trend and the moonshot margin goal give a clear winning market division.
If you think of, that the iBuying-segment will return to old strength, fueled by the great brokerage disruption, this is the stock to achieve an above average return. Redfin is the better choice than Opendoor, because they sell the full package. In addition it's the better choice than Zillow because the market has yet to realize its strong earnings power.
Our recommendation: This stock is a clear buy. Use sell-offs or weak market days for buying in or averaging up.
The author currently does NOT hold a position in the mentioned stock, but intends to buy shares of the mentioned stock shortly after the release of this article. The mentioned company does NOT compensate the author or the publisher of this website.
This post is not an investment advice and should not be treated as one. Please contact your local bank or broker for financial advice.