Zillow Launches Home-Flipping Program in Phoenix and Las Vegas

Post by sharemywin » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 12:40 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #27

tristanj wrote: post #11

It's not fully clear what Zillow is offering here, but my reading is that Zillow is buying homes, quickly fixing them up, and selling them. If this is what they are doing, I can see a lot of value in these "Zillow Approved" flipped houses. I've read a lot of online horror stories where people buy flipped homes only to realize they bought a lemon. Houses with shoddy construction work, code violations, and the new owne…

the new owners are stuck with tens of thousands of $ in repairs. Don't sellers have any responsibilities for what they are selling in the US? Certainly in Sweden it is the sellers responsibility to disclose any known problems to the buyer and they're financially responsible for any problems they fail to disclose.

Post by throwawaymanbot » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

tristanj wrote: post #11

It's not fully clear what Zillow is offering here, but my reading is that Zillow is buying homes, quickly fixing them up, and selling them. If this is what they are doing, I can see a lot of value in these "Zillow Approved" flipped houses. I've read a lot of online horror stories where people buy flipped homes only to realize they bought a lemon. Houses with shoddy construction work, code violations, and the new owne…

Post by travmatt » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #17

kosei wrote: post #15

Doesn't this create a big conflict of interest in their Zestimate algorithm that's core to their business? If they provide lowball Zestimates, that allows them to buy homes for cheap. Or if they own the home, they can increase the value prior to sale. Hard to trust when they could easily use this estimation system to their other business model's advantage.

I doubt zestimates are really a core of their business. Try to use a zestimate to negotiate the price on your next home. Watch how quick the experts laugh you out if the room. The zestimate is just a nice quick way to get a ballpark value of a home. But I don't think they are playing any significant role in affecting market prices.

Post by kafquaesque » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #42

kafquaesque wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A “flipper” could be highly inexperienced and not even know the underlying issue. So they may not even act in bad faith. Having a brand behind a flipped house could assuage some of those fears.

In Sweden the law basically says you as a seller are responsible for anything you reasonably should have known about (and didn't disclose to the buyer). So it's not enough to claim that you genuinely didn't know that your cellar had been flooded (because you never went down there) or that you shouldn't use wood glue to put up bathroom tiles, you have to prove that it's the sort of thing a reasonable person couldn't b…

Post by subpixel » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

hshehehjdjdjd wrote: post #23

subpixel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they plan to make offers on houses near market rate, invent a "fee" to account for the fact that they won't actually be paying market rate, and then turn around and sell the same house at market rate, pocketing the fee. For this to work at scale a lot of people must be in a situation where they can't afford the holding costs associated with waiting for their house to sell for what it's worth. Or a lot of people's…

In almost every US housing market except the Bay Area, houses can sit on the market for quite some time waiting for the right buyer. I’m looking at apartments right now in nyc and we saw a very nice place that has been on the market for half a year. It’s not exactly right for us at this time, and perhaps it is a little over priced, but it’s not hard to picture this making the owner antsy.