Glenn Kelman, Redfin Eye Profitability in 2025

In addition to cutbacks, Redfin has dealt with a whole series of activities that managers think will make Redfin for success this year.

The transition to a more traditional commission -split model with Redfin next to and away from the original model in the employee’s employee resulted in some agents who left Redfin and took their company book with them. But Kelman said that this change is already starting to pay.

In Q4 2024, Redfin added 399 new agents. From last week, Agent Count increased by 25%in the last six months.

“New employees are already better than established agents,” said Kelman. “We have just been more successful than we had hoped to attract agents and especially in setting up really good agents.”

Although some agents were not satisfied with the changes in the next model of Redfin, Kelman said that the company has enabled to attract more experienced and higher quality agents, giving the brokers the opportunity to put together the agents.

“The whole reason that you have a website that decided to hire his own agents is because we think we can be the only brand, the only real estate destination, where when you come to the website and you know you get someone good, not a random dingbat,” said Kelman. “It is someone we hired to be absolutely the best for that specific neighborhood.”

He noted that the company will continue to follow the performance of the agent to ensure that agents perform the standards of Redfin.

“It is honest to say that we are really happy that we have shifted, and it worked out well,” said Kelman.

A change in the committee’s payment models is not the only shift that Redfin agents have recently tackled. Business leaders also noted that Redfin has eliminated “rights” in an attempt to further reduce costs, such as a holiday payment.

Kelman said that the decision to lower where he said that the things that don’t care did not care after the gross margins of Redfin’s real estate services had fallen by 60 basic points year after year in the second quarter in Q4 2024. This was linked to the underestimation of the costs of the next payment plan in both the third.

“We acknowledge these costs in 2024 and from this month we will compensate them to eliminate the release of holiday and other rights that agents give less than their bonus,” said Kelman. “We are already expecting the gross margins of the first quarter of the real estate services to be considerably higher than in 2024 due to the reduction of the rights of February. We expect that margins will increase again in the second quarter as the agents hire the sale of the sale. “

Although Redfin managers believe that the addition of more top-producing agents will certainly help the company on its way to profitability, it is not the only path that Redfin will investigate in 2025. During the profit call, Kelman emphasized Redfin’s mortgage, title and digital advertising segment, which the company calls ‘Monetization’.

In 2024 Redfin’s mortgage solution on financed transactions up to 27%, an increase of 24% in 2023. But the segment lost $ 5 million, the same as a year earlier. The title connection percentages had also risen and jumped 3 percentage points annually to 63% in Q4 2024.

In contrast to the mortgage segment, however, the title segment noted the net income of $ 2 million in 2024, for a net loss of $ 500,000 in 2023. The segment of monetization also produced positive results, resulting in $ 3 million because the turnover for the Segment to $ 4 million.

According to managers, the other part of Redfin’s profitability puzzle is the recently announced rental partnership with Zillow.

Kelman said that the partnership, which will come into force in July, “will double the number of high -quality apartments on its site, allowing Redfin to compete for better traffic.”

In addition, the $ 100 million that Redfin received from Zillow helps for the partnership to finance an increase of 38% in the advertising costs of 2025.

Through the partnership, Redfin is given a whole series of entries by paying companies in real estate, so that Redfin’s need to show unpaid entries. It also enables Redfin to earn a fixed amount for every investigation over each apartment on his site, of which Kelman said it makes it easier to scale his audience.

“We think that in 2024 it was an important problem that other real estate websites had more offers. We could see that very clearly when Broker.com Signed a Zillow partnership. If we only look at that hockey stick in 2024, we’ve gave the feeling that we should do something about our inventory, “said Kelman.

“If we match another competitor, you might not get the same profit, but we do have the feeling that we are competing with one hand behind our back. So we are enthusiastic about the traffic benefit. We think it will be immediately for renting and over time we think we will also do better in traffic in general. ”

In addition to discussing financial data and strategies, Kelman also spoke to the current hot-button debate about the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Clear cooperation policy.

“What is remarkable for me is that the primary in favor of clear cooperation leads a website that was 13th a few years ago in the Real Estate for Traffic and has since fallen to the 21st,” said Kelman.

“I think the argument that with keeping inventory and publishing it is contrary to the scale that you see on one website have large websites.”

Although a ccp withdrawal would not be in the interest of the consumer, Kelman believes that there is room for MLSS to be more accommodating for sellers. But he still does not believe that withholding offers is good for buyers or sellers of houses.

“As the market softens, where it becomes more difficult to sell a house, it just seems harder to make the argument that you want to make a list of without getting maximum exposure,” said Kelman.

But with worries about brokers who switch to private quotation networks, he said that Redfin and his agents are aimed at the further movement of offers.

“The list of the list has been strong for us. So that gives us more leverage in the industry, so we are not just a pure website – we have our own offers, “said Kelman. “If other brokers want to withhold lists at a certain level, well, then you can only fight fire with fire.”