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How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

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Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#141

Post by rank0 »

alistairSH wrote: post #92
rank0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are absolutely good jobs in every city in America. Entertainment can mean anything...and frankly people should be able to find fun things to do on their own without needing bars, nightclubs, concert venues, etc. I concede that good schools are a major barrier. I'm young and won't be having children anytime soon so I don't think about it much. Where I live, the public schools are pretty rough. It's cheaper to st…

Every city, sure, but cities are expensive. Even cities that used to be affordable, like Portland and Austin. But between the cities? Not much. Some small towns might work if you’re the town lawyer or MD, but a town can only support so many of those. And if you’re an engineer or banker? Not much employment.

Portland and Austin are the very essence of "trendy city" those places are very expensive. I'm not arguing that people move to small towns. There are hundreds of cities in the US with 100,000+ populations (not even including the metro areas). The idea that each of these cities is unaffordable and without a job market is just wrong.

Everyone wants to live in NYC, SF, DC, Miami...etc because the other areas aren't cool enough for them.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#142

Post by creaghpatr »

harikb wrote: post #35
dpierce9 wrote: post #13

Anecdote on the estimates. We bought a house for X and renovated it. The day before we listed it both Zillow and Redfin estimate had an estimate around the purchase price X. When we listed it for 2X, both companies changed their estimate to be close to the listing. However, Redfin changed the entire price history as well showing a gentle slope. Zillow preserved their previous history and showed a spike.

+1 I have always been annoyed by Redfin's rewrite of history. At least have the decency to show two lines (original prediction for last year and how it turned out to be).

Same, I find this to be a bizarre practice. What's the point if the snapshots are revised?

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#143

Post by MiroF »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #71
paxys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Heck I know several people who prefer to keep their condos/houses empty rather than rent them out at market rate because of 100% tenant friendly city and state laws. Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. At that point the city is just incentivizing homeowners to contribute to the housing…

> Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. This is one of those things that really just confuses me. It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". And to whoever downvoted yo…

> It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason".

No place in the US actually has the latter unless you've been letting them squat for half a decade or something, the issue is court delays and landlord's wanting to make their lot out to be worse than it is.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#144

Post by registeredcorn »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #71
paxys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Heck I know several people who prefer to keep their condos/houses empty rather than rent them out at market rate because of 100% tenant friendly city and state laws. Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. At that point the city is just incentivizing homeowners to contribute to the housing…

> Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. This is one of those things that really just confuses me. It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". And to whoever downvoted yo…

>landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason

I don't understand. Why aren't landlords able to do this? Isn't it seen as immoral to steal property from an owner?

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#145

Post by zardo »

dave5104 wrote: post #86
KptMarchewa wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>local regulations state that I am not allowed to live with more than 2 people unrelated to me What? Where is that? It sounds insane and extreme overreach. How can somebody regulate with whom consenting adults choose to live?

Occupancy limits are somewhat common in many cities/towns. But probably only enforced via neighborly complaint, so you don't really hear about them. Just searching "occupancy limits city" popped up the limits for Boulder, CO: https://bouldercolorado.gov/occupancy-limits

The kind of thing where you're fine unless you're "a problem" for one of your neighbors

A problem as defined by your nosiest, most uptight, or most xenophobic neighbor.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#146

Post by vanilla_nut »

LimaBearz wrote: post #41
chrisbrandow wrote: post #11

How many homes did they buy? wow. Oh, ~5,000/month.

What gets me is even if the number was significantly smaller the fallout effect is massive. A common argument I've heard defending the practice is "well they didn't buy that many homes, it was just a small portion of total sales" ...implying that its not a big deal. Lets no argue the truthiness of that statement but look at it as stated. They buy one house within a 10-20 mile radius away from you and they do so aggre…

It at least gives me hope that if regulation and profit margins push corporate buyers OUT of the market, we can return to sanity and I can someday own a home.

But given this country's history of regulating giant corporations... more likely we'll just do nothing until homelessness balloons even more and the vast majority of homes are corporate owned. Then we'll have to wait for a VC bubble burst before they start selling all of the homes and tank the market.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#147

Post by LegitShady »

jliptzin wrote: post #51
paxys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can blame Airbnb, Zillow or whoever else, but the truth is that speculation in real estate and vacation towns have both been a thing for a very long time. If the population rises and we refuse to build more houses, the existing ones will get more expensive no matter what. The solution is out there in front of us but everyone prefers to dance around it.

There's even lower hanging fruit than that. I have a 6 bedroom house, but local regulations state that I am not allowed to live with more than 2 people unrelated to me. Plenty of parking, tons of people looking for housing, but legally I am forced to keep 3 bedrooms empty.

Thats because your neighbours probably won’t like you opening a rooming house in their residential neighborhood without some kind of consultation with them on the zoning and appropriateness of such a thing.

I’ve seen houses where every room (including the living room) is occupied by a foreign student and the ‘landlord’ is running a slum rooming house. Thats what you’re not supposed to be able to do without getting approval. It impacts you negatively to avoid impacting your neighbours without consulting with them.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#148

Post by tonyarkles »

jliptzin wrote: post #51
paxys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can blame Airbnb, Zillow or whoever else, but the truth is that speculation in real estate and vacation towns have both been a thing for a very long time. If the population rises and we refuse to build more houses, the existing ones will get more expensive no matter what. The solution is out there in front of us but everyone prefers to dance around it.

There's even lower hanging fruit than that. I have a 6 bedroom house, but local regulations state that I am not allowed to live with more than 2 people unrelated to me. Plenty of parking, tons of people looking for housing, but legally I am forced to keep 3 bedrooms empty.

As a curiosity, since you're probably better versed in this than I am, does the situation change if you yourself didn't live there? I'm pretty sure around here (300kperson city in Canada), the rules are different if one of the roommates is the owner or if it's a purely rental property... which seemed even more confusing!

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#149

Post by MiroF »

registeredcorn wrote: post #144
Teknoman117 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. This is one of those things that really just confuses me. It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". And to whoever downvoted yo…

>landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason I don't understand. Why aren't landlords able to do this? Isn't it seen as immoral to steal property from an owner?

> Why aren't landlords able to do this? Isn't it seen as immoral to steal property from an owner?

Well, for one, the government should enforce contract neutrally - so if you sign a contract leasing your property, you can't unilaterally break this without cause.

Second, we as a society have an interest in giving people time to move their stuff out and find a new place to live.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#150

Post by [deleted] »

encoderer wrote: post #21

I was at Zillow for many years and left in 2020. On the tech side the pivot into iBuying was absolutely bonkers. The message from senior leadership was basically: I have no idea what your teams should be working on but it’s definitely not what they are currently working on so stop that and figure something else out. This has nothing directly to do with their market failure but they probably are driven by the same lea…

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