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Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

stevenbuccini.com

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Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#361

Post by fwip »

zionic wrote: post #359
fwip wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats lick themselves to get clean. They don't bathe even when they're outside.

Cats are not "clean" after they lick themselves, if anything this behavior is primarily responsible for the cultivation of a parasite lifecycle that has co-evolved to the cat's gut. Cats, especially ones who share litter boxes, routinely get covered in potentially parasite-bearing feces via litter boxes and ingest it via grooming. This allows for easy additional spread/cross infection. "Cats lick themselves, therefor…

The question was not "are cats clean," but "how do indoor cats clean themselves?"

Indoor cats clean themselves in the same way as outdoor cats, by licking themselves.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#362

Post by spoonjim »

hamburglar wrote: post #346
spoonjim wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two covered cars in the driveway, bushes growing out halfway into the sidewalk, house in disrepair, taller than allowed fencing with Beware of Dog signs, it’s sometimes not hard to spot someone you don’t want to live next to.

Huh. Some variation of this house exists on any given block in my city except maybe the neighborhoods where the prices are well over $2 million. No HOAs. I guess my threshold for “annoying neighbor” is a bit different from yours.

Sure, these houses exist everywhere, but most people avoid buying houses next to them. If Zillow bought such a house they’d take a loss to unload it unless they baked it into their model.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#363

Post by ipaddr »

nebula8804 wrote: post #344
ipaddr wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember hearing that 15 years ago. I remember hearing about how we are due for an earthquake that will break California into two. That was in the 80/90s. We had great fears of a new ice age in 60/70s. I don't know what the future holds but thinking Arizona will become unsafe in 10-15 due to climate change is a little foolish.

Sounds like you have "heard" a lot of different things over the years. Have you look at any actual data? Have you seen the trends in the data that have been going in the wrong direction? At the end of the day, unless the direction changes, it does not matter if it happens in 10 or 15 years or may take longer. It will happen.

I have hard data that a quake so big never happened.

I have a book from the 70s that talks about the up coming ice age with data to back up his claim.

Have I seen trends going in the wrong direction? It depends on what trends and what start point you pick. Currently things are trending lower than a few years ago as carbon output is being reduced in many countries. I remember when the target was keeping it under 3% degrees than lower than 2% now it sits at 1 1/2%. Soon it will be 1% global temp increase. So things do seem to be trending in the right direction.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#364

Post by emodendroket »

civilized wrote: post #356
emodendroket wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's obvious that homeowners know much more about the houses and neighborhoods they live in than Zillow, and this creates a big risk for Zillow. I really question the idea that most people have any idea what their home is worth without relying on... Services like Zillow. Especially if they've lived there a while.

Zillow just has Zillow. The homeowner has Zillow, local realtors, inspections, personal experience of the house...

The local Realtors are ultimately just going off sales data, and inspections rarely happen before an agreement is made in principle to buy.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#365

Post by hamburglar »

spoonjim wrote: post #362
hamburglar wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Some variation of this house exists on any given block in my city except maybe the neighborhoods where the prices are well over $2 million. No HOAs. I guess my threshold for “annoying neighbor” is a bit different from yours.

Sure, these houses exist everywhere, but most people avoid buying houses next to them. If Zillow bought such a house they’d take a loss to unload it unless they baked it into their model.

I think I’m just used to a housing market (seattle) where that is such a tiny blip it couldn’t possibly affect the price. Maybe untrue elsewhere.

Edit: it also seems like a small thing to worry about at a point in time since neighbors change. Annoying neighbors move away, or a new annoying neighbor can buy the house next door at any time. I’m not paying extra for something that is completely out of my control and could change tomorrow. The potential for annoying neighbors is not a feature of a given house so much as a feature of all houses, in my mind. But this attitude is probably more prevalent in people who don’t live in neighborhoods governed by HOAs where certain “annoying” behaviors are regulated away.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#366

Post by Frondo »

ipaddr wrote: post #310
nebula8804 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the diversity? Is there integration or do different ethnic groups just keep to themselves. Is there upward mobility for some groups but not others? What about issues like Joe Arpaio and his policies affecting the community. I can't speak for your experience but I wonder are you really seeing the whole picture? How do you feel Arizona will cope with the coming climate change? At the rate its going Arizona may b…

I remember hearing that 15 years ago. I remember hearing about how we are due for an earthquake that will break California into two. That was in the 80/90s. We had great fears of a new ice age in 60/70s. I don't know what the future holds but thinking Arizona will become unsafe in 10-15 due to climate change is a little foolish.

There were never great fears of a new ice age in the 60s/70s.

> This distinction can be made because a serious review of the literature shows that there was no such “scientific verity”. There are anecdotes that can be plucked from the record, primarily from the popular media. But a rigorous review by Tom Peterson and William Connolley (with some minor help from myself) shows that, even as the planet was in a short term cooling trend in the 1970s, concerns about greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature. The paper documenting our results has been accepted for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and Doyle Rice did a nice job summarizing the paper last week in USA Today.2

From http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2008/02/global-cooling-the-und... but there are lots of places where you can find the "we once worried about global cooling" myth debunked.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#367

Post by axg11 »

shitloadofbooks wrote: post #311
axg11 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this sounds plausible, I think there are a couple of factors that work against this theory: 1) Why layoff your data science division if they are predicting with accuracy? 2a) If you have enough conviction to call the top of the market, why sell off so much housing at a huge loss? Zillow are the only participant in the residential real estate market losing money right now. 2b) If you see signals of a forthcoming…

What mechanism can you use to short the housing market? I thought most of the stuff used in 2008 don't exist anymore/will never be offered again?

I believe there are real estate ETFs that can easily be shorted. Many of the more complex contracts and instruments still exist, there are just more limitations on how banks can invest in them.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#368

Post by TristanBall »

_xnmw wrote: post #54

Good riddance. If large-scale house flipping took off, we might actually end up in a scenario where housing was treated as a speculative asset, with empty houses getting flipped between investors looking to make a quick buck, further lowering the supply of actual places to live (because housing units remain empty while being flipped), driving up the cost for families who just want a place to live. Oh wait...

Honestly, this is the most important point. Rampant speculation, amount other things, is already destroying housing affordability ( Hi from Melbourne Australia, where I'll probably need $150k for a deposit on nothing special at all, in an inconvenient location ). It's massively increasing wealth inequality, at a rate that seems to be increasing.

If this kind of algorithmic speculation took off, not only are we likely to see the algorithms themselves form feedback loops to push prices up far higher than otherwise, even if they don't sell directly to each other, I believe it will drastically increase the size and rate of the boom bust cycle.. and we're doing that to _peoples homes_.

The scope of human suffering possible here is huge, the societal damage massive.

This needs to be so very very illegal.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#369

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

emodendroket wrote: post #350
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the things that's still useful about agents. They want to keep doing deals with each other, so the selling agent is motivated to pass on information like this.

Maybe that's been your experience. Mine has been that they're eager to cover up issues and explain away those they can't. I mean no hate, that's their job.

It has been my experience. My agent took a particular likening to me for whatever reason, probably because I'm a very low drama client, and took me around on the open houses that are mostly intended for agents to connect. In my town these happen on Wednesday morning. Selling agent usually has some basic amenities out like a coffee station, pastries, occasionally pizza. A large number of agents just cruise through continuously. It's something of a festive atmosphere. I was usually the only client vs agent in these situations, and while all agents have a degree of salesmanship to what they do, I saw first hand very frank discussions of potential problems that would cause a deal to feel sour after it was done.

As an agent you make your money on the overall volume, not squeezing the last bit out of any particular deal. Near as I can tell getting a reputation for deception is nearly career suicide unless you're at the very low end of the market. I think you're making a fundamental mistake in thinking about incentives in the context of a single sale vs having a career in a business that is very strongly driven by personal networking. This is a common fallacy in microeconomic thinking.

Re: Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

#370

Post by BenjiWiebe »

goldenkey wrote: post #352
pueblito wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona isn’t in the South

Last time I looked at a map it was next to Mexico which is as far south as one can travel before leaving the United States. Where do you consider it to be?

I believe he means it isn't in the South, but in the Southwest. The South in the US is actually southeast.

Note the capitalization.

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