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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

#381
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. has a 65% home ownership rate. Not everyone can afford a Bentley or a condo in Manhattan. That is not some terrible injustice that needs to be fixed. Living within your means and buying a place where you can afford to live is also an alternate approach. Or you can moan about capitalism and how unfair life is.

The price for housing has gone up substantially in the last 20 years, housing takes up a greater share of peoples incomes than it did in the past, and there is no reason for it. We wouldn't tolerate the price of food going up by the same percentage.

> The price for housing has gone up substantially in the last 20 years

This is the result of supply and demand. How does demand for housing increase? Falling mortgage, downpayment assistance programs, government guaranteed loans. That increases demand.

And housing is also larger than 20 years ago.

> We wouldn't tolerate the price of food going up by the same percentage.

This is just silly. It is not something you "tolerate" it's something you cause.

Food prices also rise when demand increases.

The public has 100% control over demand as they are the ones bidding up the house prices! Now they do not have 100% control over supply. But house prices have not risen because of a decline in supply.

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

#382

Former real estate finance professional, here. If you were hoping this was a sign of the real estate market falling and perhaps its your chance to get a bargain, think again. > The company is seeking roughly $2.8 billion for the houses, which are being pitched to institutional investors, according to people familiar with the matter. Institutional investors (Blackstone, Blackrock, Colony, et al) will be being in bulk,…

The people could always fix this by removing zoning bylaws, or moving somewhere with less restrictive bylaws, but it’s much easier to blame billionaires than their own voting preferences.

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

#383

Former real estate finance professional, here. If you were hoping this was a sign of the real estate market falling and perhaps its your chance to get a bargain, think again. > The company is seeking roughly $2.8 billion for the houses, which are being pitched to institutional investors, according to people familiar with the matter. Institutional investors (Blackstone, Blackrock, Colony, et al) will be being in bulk,…

This article may not be a sign, but a different[1] article is a pretty decent sign

Zillow is also selling individual homes, not just this package. In their main algorithmic buying market of Phoenix they're selling individual homes, 93% of whom they payed more for than the new current listing price (and they usually do renovations before listing)

So Zillow VCs are essentially paying people to take a discount on houses in those markets. pretty sweet

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/zillow-offers-ibuyer-sell-ph...

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

#384

Former real estate finance professional, here. If you were hoping this was a sign of the real estate market falling and perhaps its your chance to get a bargain, think again. > The company is seeking roughly $2.8 billion for the houses, which are being pitched to institutional investors, according to people familiar with the matter. Institutional investors (Blackstone, Blackrock, Colony, et al) will be being in bulk,…

Every person or corporation that owns more than one residential dwelling should pay increased property taxes based on the number of residential dwellings they own.

This is an easy problem to legislate away, our politicians are just too cowardly to decommodify housing.

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dense housing is frequently not permitted by zoning. sometimes housing itself isn't permitted. But where they are permitted, housing prices are still high. Higher even, like NYC and much of New Jersey near NYC. Is there a good example where increased density has led to lower prices, not higher ones?

Most of the area in those places still has significant zoning restrictions on density--the cap is higher than other places, but there's still a cap. That's why there are still brownstones in Brooklyn. Second, the economics of building dictate that skyscraper-level density will only happen in places where housing is relatively expensive. But there are plenty of examples of density leading to lower prices, in the subur…

> But there are plenty of examples of density leading to lower prices, in the suburbs.

Do you have specific examples? The only places I can think of are economically depressed (e.g. in the midwest, or in Florida swampland) and aren't particularly dense.

Maybe Houston? Houston is famous for having almost no zoning, but even Houston seems to be heating up these days.

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

#386

Former real estate finance professional, here. If you were hoping this was a sign of the real estate market falling and perhaps its your chance to get a bargain, think again. > The company is seeking roughly $2.8 billion for the houses, which are being pitched to institutional investors, according to people familiar with the matter. Institutional investors (Blackstone, Blackrock, Colony, et al) will be being in bulk,…

I'm a bit more optimistic. Only something like 2% of the U.S. is urban.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/america-land-use/

If it became problematic that people didn't own homes, but wanted to, they could easily just open land for building.

They may own all the land around cities and all the corporations move there. There by making "corporate cities", but at the end of the day, people can create their own thing like they did in the past.

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

#388
post #383

Former real estate finance professional, here. If you were hoping this was a sign of the real estate market falling and perhaps its your chance to get a bargain, think again. > The company is seeking roughly $2.8 billion for the houses, which are being pitched to institutional investors, according to people familiar with the matter. Institutional investors (Blackstone, Blackrock, Colony, et al) will be being in bulk,…

This article may not be a sign, but a different[1] article is a pretty decent sign Zillow is also selling individual homes, not just this package. In their main algorithmic buying market of Phoenix they're selling individual homes, 93% of whom they payed more for than the new current listing price (and they usually do renovations before listing) So Zillow VCs are essentially paying people to take a discount on houses…

Losing money is pretty sweet?

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They simply overpaid. My neighbor received an offer of $150k over the z-estimate in Tucson. He felt that it would be stupid not to sell and wasn't even thinking about selling before the offer came in, so he sold. He paid a slight premium to buy his new house out in the boonies, but the gain offset the rise in price. They are currently listing his old house at the zestimate... I doubt they find a buyer even at that pr…

And $150k is how much of the house? Needs some more numbers so we can get an idea of the scale of overpayment. Because if they're just off a few percent, I don't know why Zillow wouldn't just hold on for a bit.

Carrying costs. Electricity, landscaping, water, sewer, city taxes, etc.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're omitting a major component of the demand side: investors and speculators. If the market was just made up of the people who are looking to live in those homes, the market would be reasonable for those people. But we have a massive amount of investment funds looking for returns in an uncertain market, plus near zero interest rates for the near future. The number of investors who are buying houses they have no in…

The parent was talking about the rental market so I am talking about that. I agree your point applies to ownership.

The market for home ownership affects the market for renting. The boundaries between renters and owners are not fixed.
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