Redfin Hires Daryl Fairweather, Ph.D., as Chief Economist

Former Amazon Economist to Lead Housing Market Research Team

SEATTLE, Oct. 9, 2018 — Today Redfin, the next-generation real estate brokerage, announced Daryl Fairweather, Ph.D., has joined its ranks as chief economist. Fairweather comes to Redfin from Amazon, where she served as a senior behavioral economist, leading a team of analysts and economists focused on improving employee performance and engagement. Her experience and research interests lie at the intersection of data analysis and individual decision-making, understanding how people's choices shape the economy. Fairweather's expertise in behavioral economics pairs perfectly with Redfin's efforts to help consumers make better home buying and selling decisions.

"Redfin isn't just focused on purely academic questions about real estate, but the practical decisions people make about buying this or that house, now or later, for less than the asking price or more," said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. "With a doctoral degree in behavioral economics, Daryl is the perfect chief economist to understand the animal spirits that send the market shooting up or down, and the instinct for truth-telling to guide people on what to do no matter what happens. Just as important, her work at the Federal Reserve interviewing people who lost their homes to foreclosure in the financial crisis has given her a human connection to the broad range of issues tied to the housing market: where Americans are choosing to live, when we start families and why, if we feel rich or poor, and whether our neighborhoods restrict or expand our opportunities."

In her new role at Redfin, Fairweather will contribute to the national conversation about the housing market and lead a team of Redfin economists and data scientists responsible for providing compelling reports on real estate market, homeownership, and the economic factors shaping where and why people are buying and selling homes. She'll work closely with Redfin business leaders and agents across the country to understand the behavior and mindset of homebuyers and sellers.

"The housing market is a perfect example of how psychology affects the economy," said Fairweather. "For most of us, buying a home is the biggest financial decision we'll make in our lifetime, and yet traditionally, homebuyers have little experience and limited education on the process or the market. Emotions play a large role in real estate. I'm excited to use Redfin's unique data to understand these dynamics, and ultimately, educate consumers so they can feel confident and informed in their decisions."

As a real estate brokerage and technology company, Redfin is able to pull and analyze the latest data from the multiple listing service (MLS), its home-buying and selling customers, and its agents in real time. Redfin closely tracks not only market-wide indicators like home prices and sales, but also trends in migration and the rate at which people are touring, offering on and listing homes.

Fairweather and her team also have access to Redfin's proprietary algorithms and the data that powers Redfin consumer features, including Redfin Hot Homes, Walk Score, Compete Score and Redfin Estimate, Redfin's highly-accurate automated home value estimate.

Before joining Amazon, Fairweather served in economist and analyst roles at Intensity Corporation, Morgan Stanley and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. She recently wrote about the research she did at the Boston Fed on the housing foreclosure crisis and how that informed her interest in the real estate market. Fairweather holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, where she was mentored by acclaimed economists Richard Thaler, a 2017 Nobel Prize winner, and Steven Levitt. Fairweather received her bachelor's degree from MIT.

You can read Fairweather's personal essay about why she came to Redfin and find her research at www.redfin.com/blog.

About Redfin

Redfin is the next-generation real estate brokerage, combining its own full-service agents with modern technology to redefine real estate in the consumer's favor. Founded by software engineers, Redfin has the country's #1 brokerage website and offers a host of online tools to consumers, including the Redfin Estimate, the automated home-value estimate with the industry's lowest published error rate for listed homes. Homebuyers and sellers enjoy a full-service, technology-powered experience from Redfin real estate agents, while saving thousands in commissions. Redfin serves more than 80 major metro areas across the U.S. The company has closed more than $60 billion in home sales.