because they feel threatened or don't want to support this new trend of real estate?

We had a meeting with a traditional realtor yesterday and  we didn't like her approach. Besides some wacky advise for staging the house (painting the bathroom black to make the gold tile pop?), she was definitely not quite honest with the numbers.

So, we got to thinking about using redfin to sell again, and our only real concern is that other realtors will have their own personal incentive not to to show a property that is this 'new fad' of real estate.

Maybe with the recession and business being poorer, they can't afford to pass up redfin listings? or no?

Of course, we would still pay the buyer's agent the typical 3% fee, but even with that, we fear that perhaps realtors will still not want to show any support that they feels threatens their old standards of practice.

Anyone have any insight? It's kind of hard to know if it's happening or not though, right?

I don't have any firsthand experience with Redfin for selling a home but I would assume that if you price the home right then you will get plenty of people looking at your home whether you use Redfin or not. I am basing this opinion on all the exposure that even the shortsales are getting and they are the worst for any agent to get involved with.

I have a friend who recently listed a shortsale, priced right, and he got 11 offers already. A ton of agents have visited his property and the offers were around asking to about 15k over asking so his price is in the ballpark, not outrageously low like some of the games you hear about. If agents will not hesitate to show his place, a short sale, which will be a major headache to deal with, your place will be very easy as a standard transaction. If you have a standard equity sale and price it right then I bet nobody will pass up your listing unless they really are not a true professional.

If you can get Redfin feature your listing on its blog, that alone is worth the fee. Redfin is frequent by search engines and top in search result.

Even IF you sell 1K less, think of it as supporting a site that you and the whole community benefit in :-)

I bought my first home with Redfin in its early early days, been a fan ever since. 

That is a great question, and really will be a huge test for Redfin going forward when the market becomes more balanced - which may not happen for a very long time.  It's clear the Redfin model works for buying a home.  Less clear is how effective it will be at selling a home. 

IMO this would be a big concern 5 years ago, when agents controlled the showings more.  Nowadays, most clients come to us asking to see specific homes they've viewed on the internet.  Only the most unethical agents would not show a home due to Redfin being involved, although some agents might try to influence buyers decisions on which home/how much to offer.

That has been our thought too. We had pretty much already decided that when we bought we would try redfin.... seems kind of like a no brainer actually - especially in a relocation, but not a distant one (NoVA to Baltimore area) where we can drive around and get to know the area on our own, but don't really have a connection with realtors/people in the area. But for selling I see more disadvantages mainly in how other agents will behave.

It is true, that  agents probably don't have a lot of influence in which properties to show most people coming to see homes - especially a starter townhouse like we're selling. Most people looking where we live with be young people with families so they'll probably be searching the internet for homes. Perhaps if they are immigrants that don't speak English well, they may rely more on their realtor to also shop properties, but how many people is that?

But, yes, I can definitely see a realtor steering a client away from putting an offer on a house because it's a redfin property just out of principle... just like they may steer a client clear of a low buyer's agent commission. They can always decide to point out the negatives of a property over the positives, putting doubts in a buyer's mind. That's our concern. It has to be easier for redfin to act as buyer's agents than seller's agent... but then perhaps agents who are helping sellers also try to discourage offers from buyers with redfin agents when there are multiple offers (though money speaks volumes, right?) but then, would a seller even know of all offers that come in? Would a traditional agent sink that low to not even show an offer to the seller simply because they don't want to support a redfin sale?

Believe me, I want redfin (and it's kin) to succeed, because I think traditional real esate agents are a thing of the past or for older people who can't navigate it on their own. Kind of like door-to-door salesmen and telephone books. I just worry that the traditional route will try to get in the way any way they can and I can't afford to be a sacrifice to the change. We need to get as much money from the sale as possible.

I recently sold my home with Redfin (our agent Loren commented earlier on this thread). We started out with a traditional agent/firm and couldn't sell our home after 6 months on the market. We put it back on the market 3 months later and sold it within 7 weeks with Redfin. We had the same amount of showings using both types of agencies/agents and the same amount of traffic at open houses. I saw agent cards (after showings) from just about every agency in town. Certainly all the large ones and most of the smaller and independent real estate companies.

One thing that helped alot was the fact that Redfin is doing way more transactions per agent than any other place around. This gives each agent great insight into how to price the home which is the most critical aspect, I think, in this market. It certainly helped us sell our house. This also means they have worked with many realtors from other agencies and will know how they negotiate. They also put together a great listing using professionally shot photos. I'm amazed at how many realtors cut corners on this aspect of marketing. 

One thing you have to be ready for is not working in person with them. I found this impersonal at first but soon got to know the agent over the phone and through email. If anything, I communicated more often with my Redfin agent than any other agent I've worked with in the past.