Redfin has caused a bit of a stir in the real estate blogosphere (here, here and here) this week with a press release claiming that the year-old Seattle company is snagging homes for buyers at better prices than their old-school competition. In fact, the release claims that while Redfin’s agents negotiate home purchases in King County for under (on average) the sales price, other buyers pay over the sales price.

Redfin, like other companies, has taken home buying online with its own stable of agents paid a flat fee by sellers and for buyers, refunding two third of Redfin’s commission at closing if you find your own home.

Even the company’s own blog caught some heat.

Redfin’s site shows more than 100 Pierce County homes for sale. So how about it: Buyers and sellers, tempted to use Redfin? Any real estate agents see room for the company or others like it in the market? Had any good/bad/indifferent experiences?

About 40 Pierce County homes priced under $250,000 will be featured in an upcoming two-day tour sponsored by Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Already done in more than 100 markets around the country, this will be the tour’s Tacoma debut. (By one measure, such homes are affordable: The median home price in January was $266,725, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.)

The homes will appear in a guide to accompany the tour, which will take place March 31 and April 1. As part of the “Affordable Home Tour,” those interested can take homebuyer education classes.

A slide show of the houses will kick off the tour at Commencement Bay Coffee Co., 2354 Jefferson Ave. in Tacoma, where Wells Fargo says you can also find the guides for the tours. For more information about the classes or the tour, call 253-274-4904.

Plans to build hundreds of homes on Northeast Tacoma's North Shore Golf Course were deemed incomplete today by city staff.

Called The Point at Northshore, the project would have closed the 115-acre public course to make room for duplexes, fourplexes and houses. Nearby residents, hundreds of them with golf-course views, criticized the plans at meetings and on blogs as certain to clog streets, overcrowd already-full classrooms and disrupt quality of life.

According to city documents, the application failed to address potential impact to wetlands and a stream on the golf course and did not adequately account for the loss of open space. The application was submitted by North Shore Investors LLC, which is purchasing the golf course. The project’s developer is SBI Developing, a subsidiary of Soundbuilt Homes, one of the Northwest’s largest homebuilders.

Kurt Wilson, who manages Northshore Investors and SBI, said the city’s determination that the application was incomplete will be appealed. “We were surprised by the ruling,” he said this afternoon. “We worked with the city staff for nearly half a year and followed their guidelines and advice.”

You can find the city's press release here.

Far and away the most-visited site I found while researching a story for next Sunday is Realtor.com. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, not only does it almost double the unique visitors (5.6 million in January) of second place rival Yahoo! Real Estate, but viewers surfed the site last month for an average of 32 minutes and 24 seconds. That's nearly three times as long as Rent.com, the Web site that pulled in the second-longest average stay of 11 minutes and 50 seconds.

The last large lot (1.6 acres) along Grandview Drive in University Place has been scooped up and for a big-ticket price, according to Michael Morrison, an agent with John L. Scott who sold the property for $875,000. With financing for additional improvements, such as piping water to the lot, the total came to $1 million, he said.

“It’s not my most expensive, but it’s my most expensive for raw land. When you look at it as a raw-land purchase, it’s insane,” he said.

The new owner plans to tear down the property’s 1,200-square-foot house and build two or three luxury houses priced at $1.5 million and up, Morrison said.

Why the big price tag? It’s across the street from the Chambers Bay Golf Course, built by Pierce County and expected to open this summer. And if you didn’t already know, the golf course sits on the Sound. The property sold by Morrison, however, comes with no view.

Apparently there are 10 million of them, most are men and two-thirds are at least 45 years old, according to a survey by CompleteLandlord.com, a Web site that offers landlord-related services. About two-thirds also have full-time jobs.

Like businesses in general, most landlords are small time: 59 percent own less than 10 units with 45 percent owning less than five, according to the survey. What could they use more of? Real estate forms that help them comply with state and local laws and access to services to evict problem tenants. Makes you wonder how worthwhile it all is.

Pierce County listings are up and prices have slipped since May, but from the looks of the e-mail I got today from retiree Denis Rosnick, it can still be tough to find the right house: "I know there’s supposed to be a dip in the real estate market, but it hasn’t helped us in our quest to find/build our dream home. All we want is a small (2,500SF), upscale house on a quiet, private lot with some kind of view, and have had no luck after months of searching. Maybe our requirements are too demanding for the current market, but I didn’t expect it to be this difficult."

Denis and Venette Rosnick, who now live in North Tacoma, also want an acre or so of land, nine-foot ceilings and stainless-steel appliances. But they're willing to pay up to $600,000 -- well above the median home price from Gig Harbor to Puyallup.

Are others having a tough time locating their South Sound dream home? Are such buyers too picky or is it just a function of patience?

Pierce County condos fared somewhat better in the monthly numbers released last week by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, particularly when it came to price appreciation. But they have a ways to go before matching the numbers pulled down by stand-alone houses.

Condo sales prices climbed from $205,000 to $224,000 in January compared to the same month a year ago – about a 10 percent leap. Houses in the county appreciated by just more than 5 percent, to $272,500.

Condo growth beat houses on a another key measurement: sales that closed compared to January 2006. Pierce County saw 109 condominium sales go through, up from 89 in January 2006. But fewer houses closed than the same month last year – 779, down from 901.

So I relaunched Open House this week, and I want to thank you in advance for reading and encourage you to pepper the blog with questions, observations and witticisms. Real estate-related would be good, but I could also sustain online conversations on the best Americano in town, favorite travel destinations or what to do when your car is stolen (yes, mine was taken and recovered last month).

Feel free to suggest real estate topics you’d like to see better covered, anything odd or interesting you’re seeing in the market or a great Web site you’ve stumbled upon.

At the risk of seeming Zillow obsessed, I want to throw out a question for a story I'm working on: Have you or someone you know gone to Zillow.com to change attributes (# of bedrooms, square footage, etc.) assigned to your house? The folks at Zillow say there are thousands of you in Pierce County so I'd like to talk to a few and find out how often you've changed the description attached to your property and why.

So drop me an email.

Just more than one in five homeowners (21 percent) have a home equity loan, according to a poll earlier this month from Experian (the credit report company) and Gallup. More than one-third (36 percent) say they got the loan to pay for home improvements. Another 17 percent said they are using the money to consolidate debt or pay down credit cards.

Some financial advisers warn against drawing down your equity, sometime otherwise known as a nest egg. So what say you about the wisdom of tapping your equity for granite counter tops or paying down high-interest credit cards?

In the category of something you might not think of when you think of Fife: Known for being the Port of Tacoma’s backyard, the very little city landed near the top of the 2006 list for Pierce County residential building permits, beating such suburban powerhouses as Orting and Bonney Lake.

Last year, Fife gave the go ahead for 392 houses. (By comparison, Orting issued permits for 214 houses, Bonney Lake issued 262 and Tacoma issued 469.)

“Before that it was one or two houses a year, if we were lucky,” said Bonnie Rushmeier, Fife’s permit coordinator. And some years none at all.

Check out how many permits were pulled for houses (which doesn't include duplexes, triplexes or apartments) in Fife in the last seven years.
2000: 8
2001: 45
2002: 5
2003: 27
2004: 181
2005: 505
2006: 392

Most new activity can be attributed to three D.R. Horton subdivisions. Here’s a link to the projects, where houses are selling from the low $200s to the mid-$300s. according to the company's Web site.

For those following the potential closure of North Shore Golf Course in Northeast Tacoma to put up hundreds of homes, residents critical of the project have started a blog. To take a look, go here.

Also, the Northeast Tacoma Neighborhood Council will be taking on the topic at its Thursday meeting at 6:30 p.m. at Meeker Middle School, 4402 Nassau Ave. NE.

You can find more information on Soundbuilt Homes, the parent company of SBI Developing, which is putting the project together, here. Kurt Wilson, who manages SBI, said the project will be opened up to multiple builders.

Speaking of Zillow.com ... next week's Fortune magazine just landed on my desk and you'll never guess what's on the cover. A story titled: "What's Your House Really Worth? (How Zillow is turning online voyeurism into a real estate revolution.)"

It's a lengthy explainer piece that takes readers through the site's history and various aspects, including price history charts, the Make Me Move feature and how Zillow is charting its future. Check it out here.

Let’s start things off with Zillow.com. You might have already visited the Seattle company’s Web site to check out the value of your (or your neighbors’) home. The company provides data on millions of houses and condos, including charts that track supposed values for up to 10 years once you type in an address. The Seattle company won’t reveal how it derives the values, called “Zestimates," which pop up alongside number of bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage.

I ran my mom’s house in Kitsap County. The value looked good (maybe a little too good), but most of the stats listed were inaccurate, including square footage, number of bedrooms and acreage. A spokesman told me that such statistics are pulled from county records so the county must have it wrong.

How does your house (or your neighbors' – you know you’ve looked!) stack up? (See our previous blog coverage of Zillow here.)