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

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

#201

Post by refurb »

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…

Yup. As someone who was in the real estate market in 2007 it’s pretty amazing how quickly we went from “be careful with housing” to “housing only goes up, it’s now or never”. I’d say it took about 5 years.

Human recency bias is very strong. Whatever trend has happened in the last 6-12 months is assumed to continue ad infinitum. And that’s true on both sides. When the market crashed everyone assumed it was forever.

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

#202

Post by JohnWhigham »

hncurious wrote: post #34
woah wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're on the tail end of 50 years of policy to make single family homes into a perpetually growing investment vehicle to finance baby boomer's retirements.

I hope you're right, but what signs do you see that it's at the tail end? Home ownership rate is at 65%. They want their home value to keep increasing and I don't see evidence of millennials being any less self interested when the rubber meets the road. https://www.statista.com/statistics/184902/homeownership-rat...

Yup, milliennials are just doing what their parents did. Just shows how egregious boomers have been in fucking up this country with their own greed.

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

#203

Post by whimsicalism »

giantg2 wrote: post #177
whimsicalism wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obvious that there are large returns to density. This has been repeatedly studied. This is why people move to cities and why employers move to cities. As more people are brought into the world, those cities will get larger. Effectively prohibiting construction is a ridiculously stupid policy > Nothing wrong with people in a community wanting to set standards for their area. There certainly can be. I don't…

"Effectively prohibiting construction is a ridiculously stupid policy" But one has to convince the residents or other voting population of that. "it obviously can't apply for everything, and housing is one of the things it shouldn't apply to." I generally agree that government should take the smallest role possible. It seems that this topic has a long and expansive precedent - code requirements for how structures are…

> But one has to convince the residents or other voting population of that.

There's plenty of other things that that has obviously not been true for, I don't see why we should default to this extreme localism you seem to be advocating.

We didn't let local voters decide to continue imposing testing requirements to vote, we didn't let them allow businesses to continue to determine patrons based on race, we don't allow local jurisdictions to unilaterally confiscate land/property from private owners.

Given that this is a large problem, I don't see why non-local governmental action should be given an effective veto power by residents who don't want to see anyone new in their neighborhood. The burden is on you to justify that, given extensive evidence on how this would be welfare & growth enhancing.

> What the preference was aimed at is that many people want single homes, garages, yards, etc. If they can't get them, they will end up moving to where they can. If they have them, they (and the other neighbors) will advocate to keep the neighborhood that way.

Yes, plenty of people advocate for things that are in their self-interest yet bad for society. Your point?

> You can call something societally beneficial, but others might not see it the same way.

Sure. By beneficial, I mean net welfare enhancing for society. It's obviously not beneficial if your criteria is "increasing the price of my home by constricting supply."

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

#204

Post by mschuster91 »

cletus wrote: post #97
drnonsense42 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree strongly with this sentiment. Clearly Zillow is not going to buy all the houses in America and turn us into serfs overnight - that is an absurd strawman. What? Zillow is far from the only actor here trying to enter this space. It's quite ridiculous to claim, as you are, that industrial-scale home speculation is doomed to fail since there are boom and bust cycles and therefore we don't need to worry. That's…

> We really don't have any direct, past precedent for this type of situation Yeah, we do. Massive housing speculation in the mid-2000s. > The fact that Zillow failed on their initial attempt does not imply that this can't work I'm reminded of Gamestop here. Around the time $GME first spiked and then fell you saw lots of people trying to encourage everyone to hold. What this ignored is that someone would be left holdi…

> Around the time $GME first spiked and then fell you saw lots of people trying to encourage everyone to hold.

Everyone who got into $GME after the first spike knows that the value will tank some time, they are in it simply for the lulz - to this day, short sellers are accumulating losses, and given how long the price has stood up way over anything supported by fundamentals there must have been dozens of billions of dollars in value lost for them.

Obviously some are in $GME in the vain-ish hope of a second short squeeze event... but that's just gambling.

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

#205

Post by varelse »

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…

They just need to hold all that inventory long enough for it to go black. But of course the market can remain irrational longer than they can remain solvent so that's not how it will play out.

Also good luck convincing the sociopaths of VC to get rich slow here: they want their capital back so they can throw it at more promising get-rich-quick schemes.

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

#206

Post by edrxty »

samsolomon wrote: post #70

This isn't surprising to me. Early on in our home search we found a house that we loved, but was extremely overpriced—even in a hot market. The house was not owned by Zillow, but a similar company. When we asked for disclosures we did not receive them for almost a week. My agent warned me that there were going to be things wrong with the house and that they probably would not be disclosed. I found a thread on reddit…

Wow I just had the exact same thing happen to me. Problem was they tried to wait me out through inspections to avoid agreeing to concessions. The place was nice but turned out to need a full roof and hvac replacement immediately.

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

#207

Post by refurb »

unethical_ban wrote: post #158
cletus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We really don't have any direct, past precedent for this type of situation Yeah, we do. Massive housing speculation in the mid-2000s. > The fact that Zillow failed on their initial attempt does not imply that this can't work I'm reminded of Gamestop here. Around the time $GME first spiked and then fell you saw lots of people trying to encourage everyone to hold. What this ignored is that someone would be left holdi…

Like the other responder, I don't think the 00s and this cycle have much to do with each other. 00s was lots of people who couldn't afford a home being provided mortgages by banks, and it falling. This is presumably a number of well-financed institutions buying up property to hold or rent. Now, perhaps you're correct that it isn't as bad as it seemed, since Zillow is selling the homes rather than getting into the ren…

Exactly! It’s different this time. Fundamentals are strong. Old rules don’t apply.

Just like the last bubble.

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

#208

Post by kipchak »

nradov wrote: post #178
browningstreet wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where? Three years ago, I could've bought a house at 60% of current market rate now in my town of 700K. I wasn't in a position to buy that house (under median) then, and I don't want to buy it now given market conditions. The other issue is that the median housing price in my city is now above the FHA limit for this area... so no 10% down mortgages. Again, that wasn't the case 3 years ago. I also need to replace my l…

Where? Almost everywhere except for a few high cost cities. Take your pick. There are currently 71 homes for sale in Nashville, TN at or under $175K.

Are there? I'm seeing two, one of which is 1b1b 588 square feet and not connected to water/sewer and the other looks rather rough.

[1]https://tinyurl.com/t27bjyej

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

#210

Post by refurb »

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.

You know what else will do that? A general sense among the population that certain real estate is a “cant lose” investment and a general shift in desirability from suburbs to urban housing.
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