Funny I've bought two houses in Berkeley in the last 4 years (bought one, sold it, bought another) both times I found the Redfin data to be spot on, ie new list

Funny I've bought two houses in Berkeley in the last 4 years (bought one, sold it, bought another) both times I found the Redfin data to be spot on, ie new listings every Thursday the same list I'd get from my agent. This won't beat finding an agent with a listing before it hits the market but the East Bay is hot, if I'm a seller theres no way I'm not putting a house on the open market. The first house we bought my wife and I found on Redfin (we timed the bottom of the market - by luck - and bought in December of 2010) and had a friend who's an agent in SF just help with the paperwork. The second time we had a Berkeley based agent (we worked with her to sell our house so she got our "buy" work as well) but again found the house ourselves on Redfin. During our 4 month search our agent never got us a lead that wasn't on redfin. Truth be told if we buy again we may go the Redfin route, we really didn't get a ton of value from our agent on the buy side of our transaction. No way I'd sell a house without an agent however.