Redfin is coming to Canada in the next few months, marking the first international expansion for the tech-powered real estate brokerage.
Redfin plans to launch a national Canadian real estate search site and brokerage services in Toronto and Vancouver by March. The company will expand brokerage services to other provinces later.
“Our goal is to make buying and selling Canadian homes more affordable, with Redfin agents who always put customers first,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said in a statement. “We believe Canadians will love our local full-service agents, low fees and on-demand home showings. Our website and mobile apps will show all the homes for sale via the local Multiple Listing Services used by brokerages. And Redfin will show sale prices for Toronto and Vancouver homes that for years had been unavailable to consumers.”
While Redfin is just getting started in Canada, it has been tracking and participating in a despite over sales data there for years. The company says it testified to the Canadian Competition Tribunal in 2015 about a case that has transformed Canadian real estate by allowing websites to publish home sales data for the first time.
Redfin’s entrance in Canada comes just a few months after its crosstown rival Zillow made a similar move. In October, Zillow reached agreements to receive more than 50,000 listings from Canadian brokerages and franchisors.
Blair Anderson, a Toronto native with more than a decade of experience in real estate, will lead Redfin’s operations in the Toronto area, the company said.
Redfin stock is down slightly Monday morning but has risen 16 percent since the beginning of the year. Inman reported last week that Vanguard Group, the world’s largest mutual fund provider with $5.3 trillion in global assets, has steadily scooped up Redfin stock and now owns more than 10 percent of the company.
