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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

#241

Post by jdavis703 »

ineedasername wrote: post #164
jdavis703 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$400k seems very affordable. I could easily buy a house today if that’s what FHA-grade (i.e. something more than a burned out shack) housing went for. In my county the median house goes for over $1 million.

Affordable for you (and any US-based millennial with a strong education & job in the tech sector or other high skilled labor) is very different than affordable for the typical millennial, especially ones born in the last 1/3 of that generation that haven't had as much time to work up the salary scale a bit.

Assuming 20% down and good credit, the bank will make a loan to someone earning $61,000 a year for that. This is hardly “tech sector” level income, but yeah it also isn’t affordable to the bottom third of millennials either.

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

#242

Post by tibiahurried »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #232
tibiahurried wrote: post #220

Homes like stocks are way overvalued. Homes are fueled by the frenzy of ownership at all costs, and stocks keep pumping at absurd levels. Everything is extremely overpriced. Eventually, it will come down to common sense. My friend has put all his savings and stocks to buy a 2b apartment. Myself, on the other hand, did not sell any stock and have invested all my savings. I rent a much bigger place, my rent is way lowe…

Comments like this make it seem like it’s all figured out. Everyone’s situation is different based on income (sounds like you are high income too - which makes choosing where to deposit cash easier), location, family/living requirements, current net worth, job stability, partner income, etc... It is very possible too your friend made the better decision. There was a time where stocks and house prices going up was dif…

Absolutely, it all depends. But I keep seeing close friends who are now home poor. They own their place, but that's it. They are done. They don't have any significant money for rainy days, they can't afford anything else because all their money go into their properties.

For me, that's not how I want to live my life. But as you said, everyone is different. So for them, perhaps that's ok. Not judging.

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

#243

Post by 88913527 »

djrogers wrote: post #21
wayoutthere wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of idle money in the investment world that needs places to go, unfortunately. Homebuyers are still being priced out by institutional investors looking to be long-term landlords. The market consensus right now is that inflation is here to stay for the next decade and bond prices aren’t adjusting accordingly, so there’s a flood of cash into all asset classes to try to hedge.

> Homebuyers are still being priced out by institutional investors looking to be long-term landlords. There’s really no evidence that this is the cause of any of the housing bubble. Sure, it makes a good twitter thread, but institutional investors make up a tiny percentage (1%ish) of single family rentals… [1] https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac...

As percentage of the entire market, 1% is small. But prices are set on the margin: the currently active buyers and sellers. Only a small fraction of the entire housing stock churns over each year. So if institutional investors want to buy a few thousand homes, it's absolutely substantial on its impact to prices. Only 40,000 homes are sold annually in San Diego county, despite there being 1.4 million residents.

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

#244

Post by jdavis703 »

Loughla wrote: post #68
jdavis703 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$400k seems very affordable. I could easily buy a house today if that’s what FHA-grade (i.e. something more than a burned out shack) housing went for. In my county the median house goes for over $1 million.

The median home price in Q3 2021 is $404,000. That is shockingly high, but definitely not close to the 1 million figure.

According to Zillow the median price is $1.018 million in Alameda County. I probably should’ve been more specific in my post since “my county” could be anywhere.

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

#245

Post by strikelaserclaw »

woeirua wrote: post #73

I think Zillow is facing a big potential loss on these properties. The homes that I've seen on the market in my area through Zillow/OpenDoor have been exceptionally poor quality and grossly overpriced. They've been steadily marking them down week after week and they're still not selling. Some are now more than $100k below what Zillow paid for them back in Aug/Sept (on a $600-700k home). Even with their fees, Zillow h…

AT the end of the day even if a home is an asset, it is fundamentally a place to live for a lot of people, a lot of people would much rather rent than put all their savings into an over priced dump.

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

#246

Post by tibiahurried »

anonymousab wrote: post #239
tibiahurried wrote: post #220

Homes like stocks are way overvalued. Homes are fueled by the frenzy of ownership at all costs, and stocks keep pumping at absurd levels. Everything is extremely overpriced. Eventually, it will come down to common sense. My friend has put all his savings and stocks to buy a 2b apartment. Myself, on the other hand, did not sell any stock and have invested all my savings. I rent a much bigger place, my rent is way lowe…

> Eventually, it will come down to common sense People have been saying this for a long time in Canada, but there is no indication that things will change. People who waited and saved have simply seen that the price increases have far outpaced their saving rate. When it's in a government's interests to keep prices rising, then they're going to do things that keep those prices rising. Another outcome could simply be t…

> ownership of a house in some areas becomes so expensive as to be the exclusive domain of the wealthy

I agree. In fact, I live in an expensive area, but planning on moving in few years when I will be retired. Then I will buy a mansion for little money. And still gonna have plenty of savings and investments to pass onto my kids.

I don't understand the ownership at all cost. You need to run some numbers and understand if buy is financially more convenient than renting. If not, it is ok to rent. But some people are just obsessed with ownership. Even if is not financially sound.

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

#247

Post by wonderwonder »

secondaryacct wrote: post #85
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…

Let them buy overpriced useless houses, if they buy too many we'll vote them out or we'll take the homes back by force. Everything is a balance and the only way to make money long term is to be undeniably useful to a majority of people. Anything below that bar will die down in shame, infamy or violence.

"we'll take the ... back by force" Why are so many people so quick to suggest that a nationwide situation will be resolved by force. No one is going to take back hundreds of homes by force. That amount of force would be absolutely crushed by state sanctioned violence. Even if you could, what are you going to do with the thousands of homes you have now claimed? Who decides who gets to live there? What about the renters already living there? America is in an awkward position right now and the constant larping of using force to resolve issues is not helping.

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

#248

Post by slezakattack »

nradov wrote: post #190
tablespoon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where do you live that it takes "months upon months" to close a sale? Usually the complaint is that the market moves so fast people have to make risky snap purchasing decisions. IIRC, when I bought my home, the closing date was about two months after we'd made the deal with the seller. But that's not as long as it seems: there's stuff you have to do in that time, like getting the inspection done, haggling over any…

Buyers frequently waive the inspection contingency in hot markets with limited supply. Sellers are more likely to accept offers with fewer contingencies.

You're not wrong. However, even if you make an all-cash offer and remove every single contingency, you're still looking at roughly 2 weeks minimum to close. You're making the assumption that title companies are competent (they are not) and move quickly (they do not). Wire transfer takes a few days, need to find a notary to sign all of the closing docs, and title companies are slammed with all of the other home purchases happening as well.

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

#249

Post by strikelaserclaw »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #134
rdudek wrote: post #113

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.

I can't help but feel this is another bubble. I'm paid very well, in a not well paying region. So I'm wondering where all these folks are getting their money from. Even those new Ryan Homes which are cookie cutter and made out of pure vinyl are going for $250K. Maybe my doom-ish outlook is because I'm a millenial so I'm used to everything being bad.

cheap loans for some, and inflated asset prices for those who own assets. Most people don't think "can i afford this house", they think "can i pay the monthly payment". Add to this the frenzy of asset prices increasing and FOMO, you get a real situation where people who were waiting to buy, buy now because they think they will miss out on cheap loans and increasing asset prices.

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

#250

Post by decebalus1 »

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. Real estate is no different. That's not to say we can't make the system better. We can and we need to. But serfdom isn't imminent either.

Zillow is just a piece of the puzzle. I don't want to go down the 'collapse-porn' hole but with Zillow (and many others) doing this and pushing/pricing out family buyers + my city's new buildings being 99% rentals owned by financial corporations, I don't see a bright home ownership future. I'm driving around and all I see are 'vibrant' cities that look like https://archive.curbed.com/2018/12/4/18125536/real-estate-mo.... I find that super depressing. Whenever I see cranes going up I get excited there's going to be a new condo building. NOPE. It's yet another 6 story matchbox owned by some no name shell in Delaware which ends up in 2 years under Berkshire Hathaway.

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