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Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

bloomberg.com

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Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#111

Post by gitfan86 »

ineedasername wrote: post #30

Sounds like they got in too close to the peak (not to mention delays & increased costs in refurb) and didn't factor increased carrying costs on the potential that these would sit on the market a bit longer if they wanted to sell at a higher premium. A hard lesson for them that listing aggregation & analysis of the market is far different than direct investments & flipping. Flippers take a big risk and offset inevitab…

Maybe on paper it costs 10k to do cosmetic fixes on a house that will now sell for 80k more. But there is no guarantee that workers will be available and interested in doing that small budget work. More importantly to your point the local realtors and other people in the area are likely to pick up any really good deals before Zillow gets to them.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#112

Post by colinmhayes »

rel2thr wrote: post #91

very tough to build a model like this to purchase homes cause you hit a really rough adverse selection problem even if your model is 99% great , the 1% that you overvalue are going to be the sellers that come to you and agree to sell you their homes because your offer is too good to be true

Yea, I'm sure everyone with a lemon house was licking their lips when they heard Zillow would buy sight unseen.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#113

Post by rdudek »

They seem to be flipping the houses fast and hard around my neighborhood. One of my favorite things to do is walk around with the dog and see houses go up for sale. Lately, I noticed houses sold only to be relisted by Zillow like 30 days later at $50k+ the original price. And they actually seem to be able to sell them that high. My house is currently worth 3x what I paid for it back in summer of 2013.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#114

Post by whimsicalism »

jackorange wrote: post #106
whimsicalism wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, youth here. The housing market remains screwed regardless of the actions of Zillow or Blackstone or whomever.

I think this is a fallacy perpetuated by unrealistic ideals. I bought a house for 175K at 24. I only make 50K a year. I don't have a college degree. Lot of people saying buying houses is hard, unrealistic, or impractical want to buy mansions with a 10 second commute to their workplace in silicon valley but the reality is most people are not living like that. Wage workers are still buying houses no problem in what are…

My ideal is for real housing prices to remain somewhat steady - ie. I don't like that I have to pay much more than inflation to get a house compared to what my parents pay.

It'd be nice to be able to afford a house where I grew up without having to tie a ridiculous amount of my net worth up in this one very pricey illiquid asset, even if I could get the mortgage.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#115

Post by throwaway0a5e »

harryh wrote: post #75
whimsicalism wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, youth here. The housing market remains screwed regardless of the actions of Zillow or Blackstone or whomever.

Decades of under-building due to restrictive zoning laws will do that.

> Decades of under-building due to failure to respect other people's property rights will do that.

Fixed the language for you.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#117

Post by HWR_14 »

cletus wrote: post #15

This is a good example of the fallacy of youth: buying too far into hype and being all "the sky is falling" with negative news. It wasn't long ago that we were reading how Zillow et al were going to buy up all the housing stock and keep millenials and Zoomers homeless forever. The people saying this have obviously never gone through a "bust" cycle. This is unsurprising as we've now been in the longest bull market in…

> History is littered with the corpses of those who tried and failed to corner a market.

History is also filled with the bloated corpses of those who did successfully corner a market. Or, in modern times, those who participated in a synergistic duopoly to skirt anti-trust laws.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#118

Post by jackorange »

whimsicalism wrote: post #114
jackorange wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a fallacy perpetuated by unrealistic ideals. I bought a house for 175K at 24. I only make 50K a year. I don't have a college degree. Lot of people saying buying houses is hard, unrealistic, or impractical want to buy mansions with a 10 second commute to their workplace in silicon valley but the reality is most people are not living like that. Wage workers are still buying houses no problem in what are…

My ideal is for real housing prices to remain somewhat steady - ie. I don't like that I have to pay much more than inflation to get a house compared to what my parents pay. It'd be nice to be able to afford a house where I grew up without having to tie a ridiculous amount of my net worth up in this one very pricey illiquid asset, even if I could get the mortgage.

If you can accept technology changes over time (goodbye horse and carriage), and that society changes over time (hello LGBTQI rights), why is it unreasonable to accept the price you pay for goods will change? Naturally, its a given that's not the only change. The materials to build have changed, transporting them has changed, wages have changed. Prices are not going to be the same.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#119

Post by nsv »

xyzelement wrote: post #87
SN76477 wrote: post #77

I hope this bubble bursts. In less than 3 years the rent in our working class city went up 45%. Not to mention the absurd qualifications one needs to rent. 4 times the income to rent, very good credit and background checks. This is not sustainable for working class people.

> In less than 3 years the rent in our working class city went up 45%. I sympathize with that but I want to make sure people understand the dynamics. Prices are driven by supply and demand. If there's only one empty apartment in the city and you're willing to pay $2000/month, I am gonna have to pay $2100 month if I want to live there instead of you. That's sort of separate (though related to) prices of houses. What w…

This is true, but it's important to consider also things which might artificially constrain supply, such as laws that make it harder to build housing or policy which incentivizes buying homes as an investment. A commonly repeated statistic, there are more empty homes than there are homeless persons in the US (around 17 million empty homes vs. around 600,000 homeless).

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#120

Post by short12 »

ISL wrote: post #53
cletus wrote: post #15

This is a good example of the fallacy of youth: buying too far into hype and being all "the sky is falling" with negative news. It wasn't long ago that we were reading how Zillow et al were going to buy up all the housing stock and keep millenials and Zoomers homeless forever. The people saying this have obviously never gone through a "bust" cycle. This is unsurprising as we've now been in the longest bull market in…

As I understand things, Zillow's approach wasn't a corner, but rather an attempt at arbitrage/value-creation. They were pretty sure they had an edge at price-estimation and had enough capital to be able to simultaneously offer sellers execution speed and offer buyers a price they would accept. It is a market-making play. My impression here is that Zillow has re-evaluated some part of that calculus and decided to pull…

>They were pretty sure they had an edge at price-estimation

If they actually thought that they must have been high af

Their tool is absolutely terrible

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