Latest / Sunlight Matters / Beyond the Floor Plan: How Redfin Is Bringing Sunlight into Property Search with Ariel Dos Santos

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Beyond the Floor Plan: How Redfin Is Bringing Sunlight into Property Search with Ariel Dos Santos · Sunlight Matters

• 0:00
  Ariel Dos Santos: Sixty-seven percent of them said sunlight is a really critical part of how satisfied they are with their home.
• 0:05
  Ariel Dos Santos: Anything related to the environment, our environment right now is changing at a really dramatic pace.
• 0:11
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um I think anything related to the environment with you know sunlight, weather, climate is gonna become more and more important to customers as they look about where they're going to live and where they are living.
• 0:23
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so um I think it's important now, and I expect it will continue to grow in importance um over the you know for a long time.
• 0:35
  Speaker: Welcome to Sunlight Matters, the podcast that reconnects us with the sun.
• 0:40
  Speaker: Join us as we explore the power and influence of our star, the force at the heart of everything.
• 0:45
  Speaker: Each episode we speak with leading experts to uncover the ways sunlight shapes our world.
• 0:54
  Dave Wallace: Ariel, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:56
  Dave Wallace: We are absolutely delighted to have you.
• 1:00
  Dave Wallace: Uh, I wonder if you could start by introducing yourself um and telling us a bit about Redfin.
• 1:06
  Dave Wallace: Now, I think I I told you we have a global audience, so there may be a few people out there who who don't know what Redfin or who Redfin is, and and kind of, I guess, the scale of Redfin.
• 1:19
  Dave Wallace: So if you could perhaps give a bit of background to the company as well, that would be fantastic.
• 1:24
  Ariel Dos Santos: Sure, that sounds great.
• 1:25
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, my name's Ariel Dos Santos.
• 1:27
  Ariel Dos Santos: I'm the chief product and design officer for Redfin.
• 1:31
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, and I've been here for about four and a half years.
• 1:34
  Ariel Dos Santos: And Redfin, for those that don't know, is one of the leading real estate search portals um in the United States.
• 1:43
  Ariel Dos Santos: So we have about 50 million monthly active users, and people use Redfin for all sorts of things, um, primarily to find homes that are for sale.
• 1:53
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so they can come and they can evaluate homes all over the country.
• 1:57
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, they can see inventory that doesn't exist in any other portal.
• 2:03
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, homeowners can come to Redfin, they can look at the house that they own, they can look at their home value, they can look at their estimate.
• 2:11
  Ariel Dos Santos: Renters are able to come to Redfin and find properties for rent.
• 2:15
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, people that are looking to buy a home are able to come to Redfin and get a mortgage andor refinance their current mortgage.
• 2:23
  Ariel Dos Santos: So Redfin has really become sort of an end-to-end destination for home ownership.
• 2:28
  Ariel Dos Santos: They can reach out and tour um a property with one of our real estate agents or partner agents.
• 2:35
  Ariel Dos Santos: So it really is a uh one-stop shop for anyone that is looking uh to home uh or to manage their home or any of those things.
• 2:45
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, our mission, because it's helpful as you we talked today, is and it's been the same for you know the 20 plus years we've been around, is to redefine real estate in the consumer's favor.
• 2:56
  Ariel Dos Santos: So we're always looking for opportunities to how can we change the experience for customers?
• 3:02
  Ariel Dos Santos: And customers means buyers, sellers, agents, everyone sort of involved in the ecosystem.
• 3:07
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, and I'm really excited to get a chance to talk to you all about Sunlight and the work that we've done there and how that sort of very much aligns with our mission and our history as a company.
• 3:16
  Ariel Dos Santos: Awesome.
• 3:17
  Dave Wallace: Amazing.
• 3:18
  Dave Wallace: I mean, it from like when we first kind of got involved with Redfin, I mean, just the sheer scale of the operation is just mind-blowing.
• 3:27
  Dave Wallace: And I think, you know, uh I guess Georg and I, we have quite a European lens on things.
• 3:33
  Dave Wallace: So you you know, we have we have property portals in in the places we live, but I mean Redfin is just uh a different order of magnitude.
• 3:44
  Dave Wallace: I mean, so it's 50 million uh uh uh users per month.
• 3:49
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah, monthly active users, that's how we sort of think about it.
• 3:53
  Dave Wallace: Fantastic.
• 3:53
  Dave Wallace: And I think I mean you you know, I guess we're gonna jump straight into it in terms of sunlight.
• 3:58
  Dave Wallace: I mean, again, I think Redfin's got a reputation for innovation.
• 4:03
  Dave Wallace: So uh from what I understand, you introduced uh some real innovative features previously.
• 4:11
  Dave Wallace: Um but you know, I uh you you you then sort of were at a point, and you know, I'd love to know the story in the background where you were thinking about people um as they think about properties the impact of sun on those properties.
• 4:28
  Dave Wallace: And I, you know, so we reached out at a point when I think you were thinking about that.
• 4:33
  Dave Wallace: So I was kind of just interested, if you wouldn't mind going through the sort of redfin side of things in terms of the thinking that you had.
• 4:41
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah, that sounds great.
• 4:42
  Ariel Dos Santos: And if you maybe, you know, if I go back just in the way back machine, you know, there was a point uh early in redfin history where Redfin introduced homes on a map.
• 4:56
  Ariel Dos Santos: You used to not be able to see homes in a map, which seems very foreign today.
• 5:00
  Ariel Dos Santos: You used to look at an address, and then you would either have to go, you know, pull out your atlas or know this exact location and then know exactly that the location of that house.
• 5:09
  Ariel Dos Santos: And then we started putting things in a map.
• 5:11
  Ariel Dos Santos: And that journey from Redfin from that moment to where we are today has just been this evolution of how I sort of described of like changing the inputs, changing the way people can find information.
• 5:24
  Ariel Dos Santos: So more pictures, a faster map, uh additional sort of filters.
• 5:30
  Ariel Dos Santos: And if you really cared about, you know, um a specific thing, you could sort of uh put it in there and it would sort of give you uh those inputs.
• 5:39
  Ariel Dos Santos: And then changing the outputs, meaning changing the way the information will and the way we display it and present it to you.
• 5:45
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um and that's been sort of this evolution.
• 5:47
  Ariel Dos Santos: And then a few years ago, we started to realize, well, we couldn't just solve the problem of like, what is this property and what does it look like?
• 5:58
  Ariel Dos Santos: We needed to really start to solve what is it like to live at this house?
• 6:02
  Ariel Dos Santos: So it's not just about the home.
• 6:04
  Ariel Dos Santos: And when you start thinking about living in a house versus buying a house, it's very two different things.
• 6:10
  Ariel Dos Santos: There are things that you care about.
• 6:12
  Ariel Dos Santos: There are, you know, what is the neighborhood like, um, what is the climate uh like?
• 6:17
  Ariel Dos Santos: And one of the big pieces is we've sort of the way we thought about it is it's nearly impossible to know all the things to matter to all the users because different users are going to care about different things.
• 6:33
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um we've always heard that sunlight was an important factor.
• 6:37
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think as more and more research, uh helped by a lot of what you all are doing, has come out around the power of sunlight and the importance of sunlight, we started to see it become more of an important thing in people's consideration about a home.
• 6:52
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so it's sort of a perfect timing.
• 6:54
  Ariel Dos Santos: We were starting to think about all these additional data sets that we wanted to bring to Redfin.
• 6:59
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think you all reached out at a perfect time, and it sort of was a perfect, uh not like a perfect marriage where we were ready, uh, you all were ready.
• 7:09
  Ariel Dos Santos: And what Redfin has really taken a lot of pride in is we love being the first.
• 7:15
  Ariel Dos Santos: We love setting the bar of what customers should expect to see.
• 7:20
  Ariel Dos Santos: We love bringing that data to customers.
• 7:23
  Ariel Dos Santos: We love making it easy for them to understand it.
• 7:25
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know, that's one thing just to add data and be like, oh, yeah, go ahead.
• 7:29
  Ariel Dos Santos: Here's all the data about sunlight.
• 7:31
  Ariel Dos Santos: It's another whole thing to make it consumable.
• 7:34
  Ariel Dos Santos: And you can look at it if you're not a sunlight expert and understand what does this mean for me?
• 7:39
  Ariel Dos Santos: What should I know about it?
• 7:41
  Ariel Dos Santos: What should apply that to me or my family or whatever that situation is?
• 7:45
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so um, it was perfect.
• 7:47
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I'm so glad we did it.
• 7:48
  Ariel Dos Santos: Uh, I'm so glad to see the results.
• 7:51
  Ariel Dos Santos: And my guess is a lot of other folks will start to think about sunlight in their real estate search portals as well, which is great.
• 7:57
  Ariel Dos Santos: Like we love being the first, but part of our job is really to sort of bring sort of change what is expected in real estate and um what buyers should expect.
• 8:06
  Georg Molzer: So that's amazing.
• 8:08
  Georg Molzer: I I think it's sorry, sorry, Dave.
• 8:11
  Georg Molzer: Just quickly, I mean, it's it's really cool how courageous you were, like being the first in these regards, because we are also the first in this whole topic, and and like pioneers uniting for the for the sake of a good user experience.
• 8:22
  Georg Molzer: I think that's a great relationship, great achievement.
• 8:26
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah, I I love um I love using the word pioneers when I talk with our team.
• 8:32
  Ariel Dos Santos: And because being a pioneer, you know, regardless of how big of a small of a pioneer or pioneer effort you are, um, is scary.
• 8:39
  Ariel Dos Santos: It does take courage, and sometimes they don't work out.
• 8:42
  Ariel Dos Santos: Sometimes we've pioneered in things that weren't the right thing or didn't have the impact it is.
• 8:48
  Ariel Dos Santos: But when you do get it and you start to see the results, um, all of that pain of being the first and all of those challenges of being first, all of a sudden feel like uh wasn't a big deal.
• 8:59
  Ariel Dos Santos: You sort of were like so glad you put the you put all the work to get that done.
• 9:02
  Dave Wallace: So fantastic.
• 9:04
  Dave Wallace: I mean, and and and I think I love what you talk about in terms of sort of functionality, because I guess at the other end of the scale, there's a sort of war of attrition in terms of functionality that could be added.
• 9:16
  Dave Wallace: And I think what's kind of interesting is the process that you go through in terms of validating do people want this?
• 9:24
  Dave Wallace: Um is it of value?
• 9:27
  Dave Wallace: And uh you it was I guess we were really blessed because you did some research with consumers as well, very insightful.
• 9:33
  Dave Wallace: But what's really obvious is is how important to a a sizable segment of the population sun in their houses is.
• 9:44
  Dave Wallace: And I think you know, to your point, um it's such a valid point.
• 9:47
  Dave Wallace: This whole thing about this isn't just about buying homes, this is about living in homes, you know.
• 9:53
  Dave Wallace: So the reason Georg and I bonded was, you know, I had a had a dark problem in my house and it was driving me, driving me mad.
• 10:02
  Dave Wallace: And I think you know, when I looked at Shadow Map, I was like, why didn't I have this tool when I I bought the house?
• 10:08
  Dave Wallace: But actually, you know, it's helped me solve the problem as I've kind of lived here.
• 10:13
  Dave Wallace: So, you know, I won't go into it, but it's it's it's incredible.
• 10:17
  Dave Wallace: I mean, it just in terms of sort of your your views and what you see across your user base.
• 10:22
  Dave Wallace: Um, how important do you think sunlight is to people as part of their the living in the houses that they do?
• 10:31
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah, we did some research um with our customers and some surveys, and you know, we we surveyed a bunch of US um residents, and 67% of them said sunlight is a really critical part of how satisfied they are with their home.
• 10:45
  Ariel Dos Santos: And you know, that's a really that's not a small number of people that uh are there.
• 10:51
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I, you know, I think it's I think things have evolved.
• 10:54
  Ariel Dos Santos: I don't I think the concept of sunlight as an important part of our overall health is really sort of uh come into light to pun intended, where I think more and more people realize the importance of no, especially I live in Seattle.
• 11:10
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think Seattle has always been the sort of a gloomy-ish, darkish city.
• 11:15
  Ariel Dos Santos: We're about to enter our dark periods.
• 11:17
  Ariel Dos Santos: And, you know, uh, we've talked a lot about sort of sunlight lamps and all these different things and vitamin D and all these different, but sort of being able to understand how your particular home and how much sunlight it allows and the moments that it has is growing much more um and I think anything related to the environment, our environment right now is changing at a really dramatic pace.
• 11:37
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um and I think anything related to the environment, what you know, sunlight, weather, climate is just gonna become more and more important to customers as they look about where they're going to live and where they are living.
• 11:49
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so um I think it's important now, and I expect it will continue to grow in importance um over the you know for a long time.
• 11:58
  Georg Molzer: So what do you think?
• 12:01
  Georg Molzer: Like, why did it take um everybody so long to come up with this with the solution?
• 12:06
  Georg Molzer: I mean, we also we launched this some years ago, but I think people have always wondered how the sunlight would be in their apartment.
• 12:12
  Georg Molzer: What was the the issue?
• 12:13
  Georg Molzer: Like, why didn't nobody did it earlier than Shadow Mac?
• 12:16
  Ariel Dos Santos: I, you know, there are there are a lot of data layers that everyone's been adding to their portals, ourselves included.
• 12:25
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think there's an element of how many can you do and how many can you introduce in a given time?
• 12:31
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so um I think it's just a function of time and people getting more um comfortable in understanding the data and also just companies having the time to sort of invest in it.
• 12:44
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think it's also gotten a lot easier.
• 12:46
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think you all were great partners in ingesting the data.
• 12:49
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know, a lot of the new technologies now make it ingestion of the data and display of the data much easier than it used to be.
• 12:55
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, you know, I've worked on data ingestion pro you know products before where, you know, you're working for a year to figure out how to get the data from company A to company B in a way that is sort of you know is fast and performative and all of these things.
• 13:10
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think, you know, we were able to do a lot in a matter of just a few months, um, which I think has made it a little bit easier to get some stuff done as well.
• 13:18
  Dave Wallace: So I mean, I just just on your point of being in Seattle, I mean, again, you know, both Gerg and I were in northern latitudes.
• 13:27
  Dave Wallace: I think it really matters in northern latitudes.
• 13:31
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I just wondered if uh there's anything that you've seen so far in terms of differences across the the latitudes in in the U.S.
• 13:40
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um I you know, I don't have any data to share on like different usage, but we do know that different things matter in different parts of the U.S.
• 13:49
  Ariel Dos Santos: And that can be even in the city of Seattle, you know, Seattle has a set of you know climates and conditions that people care about.
• 13:59
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know, if you drive three hours east to the other side of the mountains, you have a whole set of different things that you're looking at in a property.
• 14:07
  Ariel Dos Santos: You're in a much more sort of uh you're in a much more drier environment, you've got wildfires to think about, you've got a lot more snow, it's a lot colder, um, you actually get a lot more sunlight once you cross uh the mountains into the other side of the state.
• 14:21
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so I do think wherever customers are looking for a property, they start to understand what matters to them.
• 14:30
  Ariel Dos Santos: And part of why we bring a lot of that stuff to our pages is you may not know, you know, if you're relocating, for example, which, you know, during the time of COVID, um, and even still now you still see a lot of relocations, um, you may not know what you need to care about in location A.
• 14:46
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know, if I'd never lived in, I mean, Seattle might be a little bit easier because I think it's got a reputation of what it's like weather-wise.
• 14:54
  Ariel Dos Santos: But if you move to a city that you don't understand that, being able to come to Redfin and see all the information that is relevant about that particular location may help you ask different sets of questions.
• 15:04
  Ariel Dos Santos: Or, you know, when you go and tour that house, you may say, Hey, I noticed the sunlight here.
• 15:09
  Ariel Dos Santos: Let me actually go see and inspect it.
• 15:11
  Ariel Dos Santos: Let me see how it feels in there, let me be aware of it.
• 15:14
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, rather than be surprised after you've already moved in.
• 15:17
  Ariel Dos Santos: And you're like, I wish I knew that, you know, I didn't get any sunlight in this particular house and it would have helped me make a different decision potentially, or ask different questions during the purchasing process.
• 15:28
  Dave Wallace: So and you know, I again we're we're lucky because we're at a point in time where like you talk about data ingestion, but the the the benefits we have of being able to look at information and make decisions on information is is incredible, isn't it?
• 15:48
  Dave Wallace: And I guess you know, one of the jobs of Redfin is like making sure you don't un overwhelm your customers with with data.
• 15:56
  Dave Wallace: And I know there's things like conversational search, which is coming out, which I think is is phenomenal.
• 16:03
  Dave Wallace: But I I sort of want to go pick back in time and sort of reflect on like b before Shadow Map or you know, other tools exist.
• 16:12
  Dave Wallace: How do we how do we kind of know any of this stuff?
• 16:14
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I I guess we were quite reliant on the the estate agents and the brokers themselves.
• 16:21
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah, you know, I I'll I'll guess I think real estate agents uh are there to serve, you know, the needs of the I think in our experience with our real estate agents, um, they want as much information as possible about a particular property.
• 16:40
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think prior to a lot of these technologies, it was incumbent on them to go figure out how to get that data and how to understand it and their local expertise about that particular neighborhood or that particular house.
• 16:52
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think now it's almost like we've given them all a bunch of superpowers and agents can come and understand, you know.
• 16:59
  Ariel Dos Santos: So if a customer has a question about, hey, what is the sunlight in this house?
• 17:03
  Ariel Dos Santos: An agent is able to go answer that.
• 17:05
  Ariel Dos Santos: And they can come to Redfin uh and see that data and are able to guide their prospective buyer in that.
• 17:12
  Ariel Dos Santos: So, you know, I think data helps everybody.
• 17:15
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, and I think more and more data comes um almost every, you know, not necessarily every day, but the more data that starts to come, the more data that starts to be available.
• 17:30
  Ariel Dos Santos: And data isn't static.
• 17:31
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know, you all aren't sitting there being like, okay, we did it.
• 17:34
  Ariel Dos Santos: We're never gonna touch, you know, how we monitor sunlight data, how we show sunlight data.
• 17:40
  Ariel Dos Santos: It is sort of these ever-evolving things.
• 17:42
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I still think for a lot of data sets, I think sunlight is one of them.
• 17:45
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think we're still in the really early innings of how is sunlight today, how is sunlight evolving, how is it sort of at different rooms in your house?
• 17:54
  Ariel Dos Santos: So I love to sort of imagine what's coming and what's possible with all the data sets, specifically sunlight.
• 18:02
  Ariel Dos Santos: But I think for everything, you know, if you think about the price of a home or what you might be able to do to a specific home, you know, we launched this feature a couple years ago where you could sort of redesign a room of a prospective home and you can sort of say, hey, what if the walls in this room were blue instead of yellow?
• 18:19
  Ariel Dos Santos: And you can go and you sort of go make changes, you can visually see what that is.
• 18:24
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so I think more, you know, that's just another example.
• 18:26
  Ariel Dos Santos: Photos were data, those photos got a chance to be evolved and updated and things worked through.
• 18:33
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so I just think there's more of that.
• 18:35
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think that helps all the everyone in the ecosystem, agents, buyers, sellers, you know, people that are just dreaming, homeowners that are not trying to move.
• 18:44
  Ariel Dos Santos: They just want to know, hey, what's happening in my house?
• 18:46
  Ariel Dos Santos: It's my first summer coming up in this house.
• 18:48
  Ariel Dos Santos: I don't what should I expect?
• 18:50
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um, what should I plant?
• 18:52
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know, one of the uh ones we hear a lot is people wanting to know what they should plant in their gardens.
• 18:57
  Ariel Dos Santos: What should I grow in my garden?
• 19:00
  Ariel Dos Santos: Well, I like that, you know, sunlight is a part of that, but there's also climate and weather and all of those different things too.
• 19:06
  Georg Molzer: So I mean, there's actually a really cool feature in in Shadow Map, also in the Redfield integration where you can see how many sun hours you have on arbitrary areas.
• 19:14
  Georg Molzer: So you can even see, like, okay, in that part of the garden, I have five hours of sunlight in midsummer, so you know which plant needs that and you plant it.
• 19:23
  Georg Molzer: But also what you just said about the data, I mean it's it's a it's it's the very, very important topic to use more detailed data, more up-to-date data, and then but also being able to process it and visualize it in a way that the user can can work with it.
• 19:36
  Georg Molzer: And and in the US, we we currently have like LOD LOD1 data, which is like not the highest possible um level of detail, but we are like keen on on adding higher quality data as much as we can, and and everybody will benefit from that.
• 19:50
  Georg Molzer: So we are really stoked about it.
• 19:51
  Georg Molzer: And you know, like where the future is going.
• 19:53
  Georg Molzer: I mean, Apple Maps now integrated, Gaussian splitting, like super high quality data.
• 19:58
  Georg Molzer: It's like semi-transparent surfaces and trees and leaves and all these things, and this is where the the puck is going.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: So we also stalked about improving it and and reaching more people with better technology.
• 20:12
  Dave Wallace: I mean, what one thing I mean we started with it when we first worked with Redfin, we had a kind of fairly broad brush um analysis which showed people sun hours in in the local area.
• 20:27
  Dave Wallace: We then worked to launch Sun Score with you, which is a uh a single metric for properties.
• 20:35
  Dave Wallace: Um and you know, I think it was it it was great because it sort of felt like there was a lot of collaboration between us in terms of getting to that point.
• 20:47
  Dave Wallace: But how how important do you think is that sort of single metric to the user community?
• 20:54
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah, I you know, it's uh for a lot of users, for I would say for the majority of users, they need a simple way to understand what we are trying to communicate to them.
• 21:06
  Ariel Dos Santos: And in all of our experiences, if we can provide you a single data point or an aggregate way to understand, you know, low, medium, high, good or bad, or any of those things, it goes a long way to give you that first level of information.
• 21:26
  Ariel Dos Santos: And then it allows you to, if you want to go deeper and say, well, what makes up that score?
• 21:31
  Ariel Dos Santos: You can sort of go there and find it.
• 21:33
  Ariel Dos Santos: And we do see users finding kind of those two levels of information.
• 21:36
  Ariel Dos Santos: Some people want just a score and they're good and they move on.
• 21:42
  Ariel Dos Santos: And some people see the score and want to go deeper and want to go look exactly at different times of the day.
• 21:48
  Ariel Dos Santos: And but that's part of how we built a lot of our products is we generally have sort of a surface level sort of initial metric that gives you that score, and then the ability for the user.
• 22:00
  Dave Wallace: to go deeper into it and depending on the data set you can go a little bit deep or you can go very very deep um and we see users you know navigating at all different surface levels so I mean and again it's just the the the sheer number of users you've got it's it's in incredible to kind of look at some of the behaviours that are there.
• 22:20
  Dave Wallace: And you know of course you're kind of across all the platforms as well and we see differences in usage across the platforms which is is fascinating.
• 22:30
  Dave Wallace: So yeah no it's it it's it it it's been a really for us has been a really interesting journey because you know we're we're a small startup based out of Vienna and you're this big beer moth based out of um out of Seattle but it's felt like we've all come as sort of equal partners to this and I think you know at the end of the day we were very focused on I mean it's what drives us is creating the best customer experience we possibly can.
• 23:03
  Dave Wallace: And I think to your point, you know some people just want that kind of grab bit of information where we see with some of our clients that uh as people get um closer to deciding on a deciding on a property um they do more interrogation.
• 23:21
  Dave Wallace: They'll go much deeper in terms of of sort of some profiling.
• 23:26
  Dave Wallace: And I I should also say that we also offer solar analytics and it's been interesting for us to see that that people are starting to use that as well and I think that feeds into sort of a broader trend that that's out there in terms of people becoming more self-reliant in terms of energy production and you know again it's it shows a wonderful usage of of technology for people to be able to arrive at answers.
• 23:51
  Dave Wallace: So yeah I mean I don't know if there's sort of any behaviours in particular that you've seen on Redfinette it's still very early days that you'd like to kind of call out.
• 24:02
  Dave Wallace: If you're enjoying Sunlight Matters make sure to subscribe and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.
• 24:10
  Ariel Dos Santos: You can also search Sunlight matters on Google to find more episodes, guest information and further insights about sunlight analysis, solar exposure and the way light shapes our spaces um I it's still really early days I I'll maybe highlight too is you know people's behavior changes the closer they get to uh making a transaction.
• 24:36
  Ariel Dos Santos: So you know some people start and they're just in the very early stages and they're looking at it from you know they're trying to figure out what kind of house do I want to be at what kind of features do I like what neighborhoods am I interested in.
• 24:49
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know even we see people that start with searches where they're willing, you know, maybe they have a job that can make them work anywhere and they're looking across five different cities.
• 24:58
  Ariel Dos Santos: And their first job is like well which one of these cities do I want to be in and then you go from cities to neighborhoods and then as you get closer and closer to being ready to make a transaction people's behaviors change and the kind of information that they look at changes.
• 25:13
  Ariel Dos Santos: And then it changes again once they become the homeowner of that house.
• 25:17
  Ariel Dos Santos: Now you know they're still looking at homes they're still trying to say well what where am I going to move?
• 25:23
  Ariel Dos Santos: Who am I who where do what do the houses around me look like?
• 25:26
  Ariel Dos Santos: What are the things that I should know about this neighborhood and so part of what's the really fun you know parts of working at Redfin is I think a lot of people are like, oh you just help home buyers buy homes.
• 25:36
  Ariel Dos Santos: We're like no we get to help people the entire length of the journey from renting to you know sort of dreaming and discovering to buying to transacting to owning to selling to sort of improvements to maintenance and you really get to sort of be with customers for you know we we get to know customers for 30, 40, 50 years that are using our product you know we haven't been around that long but sort of that's the idea is that we're building relationships that are last a lifetime not transactional great you found a house I don't want to talk to you again again.
• 26:11
  Ariel Dos Santos: Our goal is really to be there with you know we're we're part of Rocket uh mortgage and the way you know think about Rocket and their ability to sort of you know be the financing partner to you throughout your entire journey not just your, you know, whether it be loans, whether it be rocket money whether it be refinancing your home whether it be getting equity out you know you could imagine a scenario Dave where you realize you bought a house that may not have the sunlight and you want to put in some new windows because you know there's windows and you were able to see that as a homeowner and you're able to come and get financing through Rocket to be able to just do that and we already know the sort of value of equity you have in your house and very quickly you can change your entire sunlight you know profile by us providing that information.
• 26:59
  Ariel Dos Santos: So it's just I think bringing this data and being able to expose it to all customers throughout their entire journey regardless where they are is part of the fun of working at Redfin and as you said I think we're still in the really early days of how do we do that.
• 27:13
  Dave Wallace: So fantastic fantastic um I I this is again you know feel free to sort of dodge this question if you want to but I I think one of the interesting things we we we we've been thinking about and we've done a bit of research is is actually the more sunlight as a kind of metric is is there and visible the potential for impacting values is there as well so I just wondered if you've got any thoughts on uh sunlight and and and property values particularly once people begin to realize this is about a long-term relationship with a property.
• 27:58
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um I think uh what I'll say is estimating the value of a property is a really difficult exercise.
• 28:08
  Ariel Dos Santos: Uh and there's lots of different ways to do it.
• 28:11
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know I think there is ways that banks do it when they're thinking about sort of the collateral and what um how much that house is worth when they're doing financing products.
• 28:22
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think there are home value estimates that allow a user to sort of have a more of a say in what they think their home is worth um and then there's the actual transaction.
• 28:33
  Ariel Dos Santos: So um do I think home values will continue to evolve to incorporate different data sets?
• 28:41
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yes um do I think that's gonna happen sort of overnight and change it no I think it's gonna take time and I I would expect that there might end up being different versions of a home value um some that are used for certain purposes and some that are used for other purposes.
• 29:00
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think that's most likely going to be okay that, you know, Dave you may want to know what your home is worth and and you know a bunch of stuff that you've done to your house and you have a lot, you have a relationship with your house and you have inputs that you can provide to that home value that others don't have awareness or don't understand or can't put a value on.
• 29:19
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know, you may you know have live in the greatest neighborhood in the UK and you're like nobody knows how incredible this neighborhood is and that is important and that it's value to you.
• 29:29
  Ariel Dos Santos: And you know if you were talking to someone those thinking about buying your home, you would probably say to them, yeah, Ariel you gotta like I didn't I never wanted to leave but I have to leave this is the greatest neighborhood ever you know my neighbors are incredible.
• 29:41
  Ariel Dos Santos: We do this, this and that that is value.
• 29:44
  Ariel Dos Santos: It's not hard to put that into financial number that you sort of stick but you know the concept of value or even just you know you know we were talking about the the value of being able to have fresh weeks orange juice that seems really silly but being able to have that or a really great coffee shop that you live by or a really incredible community um you know when we moved into our house um we sort of didn't realize how lucky we would gotten with our neighbors and the fact that our kids have friends that they can run across the street and play with or that we have a soccer field a few houses away that the kids go at night during the summer and play until 1030 at night and play hide and go seek.
• 30:22
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so I think to me the whole concept of home value is much more than just a financial number it's just about where you live and I think the more data that starts to come the more different parts will understand what that value is like.
• 30:35
  Georg Molzer: So I mean you said that so well um it's so crucial.
• 30:40
  Georg Molzer: I mean this is where we spend our time this is where we sleep this is where we meet our family where we eat you know like it's so crucial and and everything you said you know like I mean I got this orange juice from like super nearby supermarket who who has a uh a vending machine doing it this way and then think about sunlight I mean sunlight is it's so crucial.
• 31:01
  Georg Molzer: I mean we are on this journey for some years now and we are learning ourselves more and more about how important it is and and where you live where you spend most of your time and and then having sunlight as a key factor and being able to really have an understanding of what you're getting into before you move before you move into a new house a new apartment.
• 31:20
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah you said this really well thanks thanks for this Iba just to just to bring you know one of the I think everyone's going through their own sort of uh health journeys now with you know whether it be increase the amount of protein or you know and one that you know my family and my wife and I specifically talk a lot about is like getting sunlight in the morning um and being able to sort of start your day with sunlight.
• 31:47
  Ariel Dos Santos: But I sort of had this idea that like we should almost have like um community sunspots um where like okay like if you are live in a house that doesn't happen have sun, hey look in your neighborhood here's the best place if you want to wake up in the morning get sunlight is walk here or drive here, but like here's the community sunspot.
• 32:06
  Ariel Dos Santos: And you can imagine the sort of scenario this communal event where every morning at 6 30 a.m a bunch of people are out there getting their 10 to 15 minutes of sunlight in the morning.
• 32:15
  Ariel Dos Santos: But I think to me that's an example of how the data I think will continue to evolve and more and more people will start to seek that type of information.
• 32:24
  Ariel Dos Santos: And we hope you know the partners like yourselves were able to bring that information to both home buyers and homeowners.
• 32:30
  Georg Molzer: So amazing I mean I I want to add I did I just did a self-study an experiment where I got up for three weeks before sunrise and really used shadow map to find locations in Vienna.
• 32:41
  Georg Molzer: So I'm in Vienna it's not so easy to find the sunrise in Vienna and I used shadow map to find those spots and spent the first hours of the morning in the sunrise in the morning and it was of course a transition took me a while to get used to it like I had to get up at 4 a.m in in midsummer um but then what you just said like it really happened that people joined me like friends joined some people saw it on social media and and it was awesome to to start a day with with people and you know like united by the beauty of the sunrise it was an amazing experience so I'm I'm really happy you mentioned it I I mean it it's amazing and I was just talking to someone yesterday based out of the US who's buying a new house and guess what she was like oh I've been using Redfin they've got this thing called uh Sun Score and I was like yeah I mean she's like yeah I'm familiar she's like it's brilliant because uh I I need a house with great morning light because that for me is is you know non-negotiable I have to go out like she she's sort of following that whole protocol and I've I thought well this is you know I wanted to bring it to the pair of you because like I sort of feel like if that one person we've made the difference to that one person then we can all go home and pat ourselves on the back and say we've done a massively good job.
• 34:00
  Dave Wallace: But you know I think the the the fact that people are out there you know what what Gail talked about I mean we got so many insights just from Gail doing that one thing about city living and some of the difficulties around sort of you know even trying to find things like Morning Sun.
• 34:17
  Dave Wallace: So your your thoughts around kind of community spaces I think is is brilliant because you can start bringing the knowledge of the crowd to bear and you know it's actually one of the things we've been thinking about in terms of a feature is bookmark being people being able to kind of bookmark sunny places on shadow maps so people can kind of join your join your bookmark and come and find those places.
• 34:41
  Georg Molzer: And I mean also thinking into the future like imagine if you had awareness of the floor plan of the house and you would know that there's the bedroom with that window and then you can really decide hey I mean I would love to have an apartment where the sun rises into my bedroom that would be ideal.
• 34:55
  Georg Molzer: But finding that you know it's currently even impossible.
• 34:58
  Georg Molzer: Like you you would need to have very um high quality data awareness of the floor plan awareness of the windows but this is where we're going and I'm spoiling this here for our audience this is definitely where the journey is going.
• 35:09
  Georg Molzer: And we need you know like pioneering partners who are also like willing to to walk the route with us.
• 35:15
  Georg Molzer: Yeah.
• 35:15
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah we when we um we were lucky that um the house we're in now um it was getting built when we got a chance to buy it.
• 35:26
  Ariel Dos Santos: So we did this walkthrough with the builder and he was like well where do you want windows and I was like oh uh you know and so we just did our best we were like I think East is that way and so let's put a window here and you know and we mostly got it right I just said well I'm not sure I'll get the perfect I'll just make the windows really big and um because I wanted um I wanted to be able to have as many chances to have that sunlight as possible.
• 35:57
  Ariel Dos Santos: I love my favorite thing one of my favorite things in the world is to be woken up by sunlight rather than an alarm or anything else.
• 36:04
  Ariel Dos Santos: So I just love the energy I get uh from that experience.
• 36:08
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so yeah I think what you're all building and you know I just I think this is just your environmental uh factors are just gonna continue to become more and more important over time.
• 36:23
  Ariel Dos Santos: Uh and you know if out of if you go back I don't know hundreds of years they were really important.
• 36:29
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think everybody knew about their environmental factors because that was sort of so core.
• 36:34
  Ariel Dos Santos: And then I think we all lost in some ways our need and our focus and our sensitivity to those environmental factors.
• 36:41
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think now it's all sort of coming back.
• 36:43
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think we're coming back in the cycle where everyone's like hey look sure this house has X number of bedrooms or this but what are the what is what is the environment of living in this house and what does that feel like um and I think it's been really fun to be a pioneer in the space.
• 36:57
  Georg Molzer: So awesome and I also want to add that this all starts with an awareness you know I think people as I said they forgot about sunlight.
• 37:05
  Georg Molzer: They forgot about the importance of it and it's our mission to reconnect humanity with the sun and we want to you know like educate people um where the sun is you know where where it's a way label and we think that we are nudging the whole industry you know from architects from urban planners to realtors you know like that everybody is aware that it's it's a value valuable um aspect of sunlight access and by doing that we believe that we can kind of a little bit influence architects to build brighter homes to build homes which are more aligned with the sun but it all starts with having an audience that even is aware of that and um this is where it comes together.
• 37:44
  Dave Wallace: I mean I think you know I want to go back to the word pioneerer as well because you know what we've really got a sense of working with you is that you're a pioneering organization and I think in order to achieve these things you you kind of need to go in with an open mind.
• 38:00
  Dave Wallace: Now I I mean I've spent m many years in agencies and you know would always work with brands and they talk about being pioneering and honestly I think Redfin's probably the most pioneering business that I've ever worked with.
• 38:15
  Dave Wallace: And you know it's I think the fact that you would and I'm kind of curious as to you know the the bravery of of actually working with quite a small organisation.
• 38:28
  Dave Wallace: I mean I guess you're used to working with small organizations but you know that that kind of speaks volumes.
• 38:33
  Dave Wallace: But our experience of the team that you know we work with in Redfin is they've all been brilliant.
• 38:40
  Dave Wallace: They're kind of curious they're very respectful.
• 38:44
  Dave Wallace: I mean that's you know often when you're in these relationships you feel like you're you're you're the sort of junior partner so to speak and we've never had any sense of that it's always been we've always been dealt with with respect.
• 38:58
  Dave Wallace: I mean I I how's Redfin managed to kind of capture this incredible culture and you know and I I'm really talking from the heart because it's our lived experience um you know when we launch things we feel like we're going out together.
• 39:18
  Dave Wallace: So yeah I was just curious from a kind of uh a a redfin point of view is how how do you build that and maintain that culture?
• 39:29
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah you know it's what it's lovely to hear and I'm really grateful and appreciative of those comments.
• 39:36
  Ariel Dos Santos: I the way we talk about it is the way we treat ourselves at work just internally should very much mirror and will mirror the way we work with partners and that is really important to us.
• 39:51
  Ariel Dos Santos: It's really important that we have a culture that is collaborative and adventurous and risk taking you know I've I've been in companies before where everyone says to take risks and then if you take a risk and it doesn't work out everyone's getting blamed.
• 40:06
  Ariel Dos Santos: It's like well that what no one's going to take a risk if on the other side of that risk is some sort of punishment.
• 40:12
  Ariel Dos Santos: And that doesn't mean that we don't learn things as we hey we took this risk and we should have done A instead of B.
• 40:18
  Ariel Dos Santos: Why did we do A and you take those all as learning opportunities but you know I tend to think of company cultures as living organisms.
• 40:28
  Ariel Dos Santos: They are not static things and every interaction and everything that happens adjusts how that organism evolves and whether and you know my job as a leader and a lot of the other folks's job as a leader said have a really good understanding of where what does your culture need at that moment.
• 40:47
  Ariel Dos Santos: And uh we've been really good at understanding that.
• 40:51
  Ariel Dos Santos: And we haven't, you know, we've gone through really difficult moments we've gone through playoffs.
• 40:55
  Ariel Dos Santos: We've gone through sort of difficult housing markets we've gone through periods of rapid growth and rapid decline.
• 40:59
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so I think being able to just have that culture at the center of it um is really key.
• 41:05
  Ariel Dos Santos: And that allows us then when we engage with partners and you know I think we hear a lot of a lot about this from other partners it's just how fun it is to work with the Redfinn team how they are so excited to do it.
• 41:18
  Ariel Dos Santos: They're excited to figure things out they're excited to try new things um and that's part of the culture we build and then it sort of gets uh sort of manifests when we work with partners that don't work at Redfin you know we really do think like we're a team we're not you know a vendor and a provider relationship like we are we are team um and I think that sort of showed up in the way we all work together.
• 41:40
  Ariel Dos Santos: So and so you all were great too not to take all the credit.
• 41:43
  Ariel Dos Santos: I think the way you know it's fun to have companies that are trying to do new things that understand where they are understand where they're not understand where they're trying to go and having a really good important sense of that identity and that mission that you all have I think makes it really easy to work with you all.
• 42:00
  Ariel Dos Santos: You know, I think some other companies where their mission is make as much money as possible and and that I think changes the dynamics of those relationships a little bit.
• 42:08
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think with you all so clear that you have this incredibly ambitious and inspiring mission.
• 42:16
  Ariel Dos Santos: And I think it just made a lot of sense for us to work together.
• 42:19
  Georg Molzer: So I think this really showed you know like as as Dave said already like in all the interactions we had early on it was the awareness was there, the understanding was there the precision was there the respect was there and and I always say that I mean it's it's about humanity you know like technology is not for the sake of technology but it's about humans and we should put humans in the in the pole position of what we're doing and making it enjoyable to use our products like it should be a delight it should be you know feel that we put energy into these things so that they have a a better life and um yeah I'm I'm just really stoked about this corporation.
• 42:54
  Georg Molzer: It was a a breeze that's great.
• 42:58
  Dave Wallace: Well and y you know the fact that we've done something which is actually quite complex um you know and done it i in a relatively short time I I think is is kind of testament to what you can achieve when you've got very positive vibes around all of this stuff.
• 43:15
  Dave Wallace: But it you know I just wanted to let you know because I've I've spent years working with large corporates and I've often loved it.
• 43:24
  Dave Wallace: But you know the the difference between the rhetoric and the reality is always been there.
• 43:30
  Dave Wallace: Whereas I think with Redfin there well if I'm honest there wasn't a huge amount of rhetoric there was just get on and let's do this type thing and that just shone through no that's great.
• 43:42
  Dave Wallace: I mean I I just had a few final things to you you've kind of answered them already but um are there sort of preset question shall we say but I I mean from from your point of view I where does the sun feature in terms of I mean and you've kind of alluded to it but just to summarize how important the sun is to you.
• 44:04
  Ariel Dos Santos: Yeah I mean it's uh I think it's critical to how I think about sort of my day-to-day and you know we we're sort of getting close to the end of the summer in Seattle and one of the things I love about Seattle is that it often stays light until 10, 1030 um PM and I just think you sort of you know by the time the workday's over and dinner's wrapped up you still have all this time to just go be outside in sunlight.
• 44:32
  Ariel Dos Santos: And so um it's just it's I almost feel like we're um something I think we're um not quite like solar panels, but sometimes I think we're solar panels and like I got to charge my batteries all summer and like fill up with as much sunlight as possible.
• 44:47
  Ariel Dos Santos: So then when I go through the winter I've got a lot in the reserves to be able to sort of go through um the winter.
• 44:54
  Ariel Dos Santos: But I also just love I there's this, you know, I'm a I really enjoy cooking.
• 45:00
  Ariel Dos Santos: I really enjoy cooking um with music and there are times where I get this sort of perfect combination where I have like incredible music that I haven't discovered that I'm listening to for the first time.
• 45:13
  Ariel Dos Santos: I'm cooking something I'm cook that I haven't cooked before and I'm sort of exploring and the sun is shining through our kitchen window and it like it's hitting it's almost like it that those are the moments where you can like hear angel singing.
• 45:26
  Ariel Dos Santos: It sort of feels like all the things come together and the sun shines and I'm there and I can just feel this sort of like freshness and aliveness that it's really hard to feel all the time.
• 45:41
  Ariel Dos Santos: But I just I have this like very vivid memory of when those three things all come together it's sort of like perfect.
• 45:47
  Dave Wallace: So love it so uh and then are you more of a sunrise or sunset person sunrise every single day.
• 45:58
  Ariel Dos Santos: Um like I would I wouldn't pick the sunrise uh any chance I could get over the sunset.
• 46:06
  Dave Wallace: I'm an early to bed person so oftentimes the sun is still up and I'm uh join the join the club yeah join the club so no well we we you know both go I've been trying to get up for as many sunrises as possible this summer as well and uh you know we've been blessed with some incredible weather here in the UK and it's lovely one of the best things I've done recently is I climbed up uh a a volcano in Bali for to watch sunrise sunrise didn't disappoint and I and I I'm with you I mean I I love sunsets as well but there's something fundamental about sunrise so fantastic fantastic well listen thank you so much for welcome and and you know thank you again to Redfin for the fun that we have with you um I mean I'm hoping that we can work with you to push some of the things that you were talking about in terms of I because it is this is early days I mean I think as people come to understand more and more about just how important the sun is to our lives our children's lives as well I mean I think there's such a job to be done in terms of getting kids outside more and things like that.
• 47:22
  Dave Wallace: So you know um would love to partner with you on these things.
• 47:27
  Dave Wallace: Yeah definitely definitely it's been it's been a blast working together and I'm excited for what we can do in the future and uh I can't wait we all get to enjoy sort of a sunrise together someday uh in person so we would love to definitely be over to enjoy your cooking and uh music and Dave is an amazing cook uh on as well I want to say well there we go there we go we'll have a cook off at some point there you go a cook a cook together we will have a cook together together there we go there you go we are cooking together already there is that's right super thank you so much you're welcome thank you all press stop thanks for listening to Sunlight Matters brought to you by Shadowman where we explore how sunlight influences the way we build design and live each day if you like what you heard today be sure to subscribe follow and leave a review on your preferred streaming platform.
• 48:24
  Dave Wallace: You can also search Sunlight matters on Google to find all our episodes, guest information and resources about sunlight analysis, solar exposure and the best home orientation for natural light.
• 48:36
  Dave Wallace: You can also head over to shadowmap.org where you can download our iOS or Android app for free today to visualize how the sun is currently impacting you.
• 48:46
  Dave Wallace: We appreciate you being part of the conversation and we'll see you next time where you can keep exploring the world through the lens of light