Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

fullstackeconomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 684 posts

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

#231

Post by BirdieNZ »

999900000999 wrote: post #204
cuteboy19 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would have fixed much of this, it's point blank illegal to run a bed and breakfast out of your home. Why? It's your home, you can do anything in it. Why should you need a license to rent out your own home for a few days? Does it physically destroy neighborhoods or just your perception of it? If so, why should anyone care?

Let's take this to the extreme, do you think you have a right to set up a commercial kitchen in your home, and set up patio furniture for random people to show up and order take out? Don't you see an issue of every single person decides to do this in your neighborhood, traffic being the first thing. The other issue too, is most people are renting out apartments, and then Airbnbing them. Like, at that point it's not y…

> Let's take this to the extreme, do you think you have a right to set up a commercial kitchen in your home, and set up patio furniture for random people to show up and order take out?

You can do this in Japan. Why shouldn't you be able to do this?

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

#232

Post by ipaddr »

javert wrote: post #130
colinmhayes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is not a viable currency. It's value is not anywhere near stable enough. It's honestly incredible that you haven't even thought of the very first problem with using bitcoin as a currency. Yes, the rich abuse the current system. They will do the same with any system. Saying "we shouldn't ensure that our currency has predictable value because that would make the rich even richer" is insane when the rich will be…

> Bitcoin is not a viable currency. It's value is not anywhere near stable enough. It can't go from zero to stable overnight. It has to start somewhere and gain stability over a long period of time. > It's honestly incredible that you haven't even thought of the very first problem with using bitcoin as a currency. You're behaving like a troll. There is an absolutely obvious objection to your prior sentence, but rathe…

Wealth and power get transferred over to the blockchain. You end up with the same structures in a less controllable currency.

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

#233

Post by bduerst »

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…

That's because real estate pricing is fixed to nearby inventory. Zillow doesn't have to buy many homes in a neighborhood to inflate the prices of all the homes, it just needs to buy 1 or 2.

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

#234

Post by JustLurking2022 »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #177
999900000999 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest to God, the founders of Airbnb should have been sent to prison. That would have fixed much of this, it's point blank illegal to run a bed and breakfast out of your home. Now if you're my buddy, and you want to slide me $200 to crash at my house for a week that's fine, but if you add technology to it, it ends up destroying entire neighborhoods. Ride-sharing is a bit different, since I'd argue the reduction in d…

> That would have fixed much of this, it's point blank illegal to run a bed and breakfast out of your home. Why? It's your home, you can do anything in it. Why should you need a license to rent out your own home for a few days? Does it physically destroy neighborhoods or just your perception of it? If so, why should anyone care?

Last summer in the midst of the pandemic, someone AirBnB'd an empty house a few streets over from us to throw a giant party. I know this because I could hear the music as though I were in a night club from my back yard. There were also cats with out of state plates parked all over the place. Our town is generally fairly lax on laws like noise restrictions, maybe because it's never been an issue and avoids involving the police in squabbles amongst neighbors, so apparently it was legal. Anyway, it was of no benefit to anyone who actually lived in town and a major PITA for everyone living in the surrounding blocks, so I can easily see how residents might choose to outlaw such rentals.

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

#236

Post by ipaddr »

rank0 wrote: post #42
janj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment, maybe you can expand. It makes sense to me that what is desirable for a primary residence would significantly overlap with what is desirable for rental, comfortable space, walkable to a city center, etc. Is your point that people should be more accommodating to the rental market? IMHO I think all cities should strongly regulate what can be a rental and add tax to homes when it is not…

I'm arguing that people should lower their standards. It should be easy to understand that not everyone can afford own property walking distance to the city center. I fully agree with you on prioritizing primary residence.

Everyone can with smaller cities. Living in a megacity and expecting it is the problem.

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

#237

Post by 999900000999 »

BirdieNZ wrote: post #231
999900000999 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take this to the extreme, do you think you have a right to set up a commercial kitchen in your home, and set up patio furniture for random people to show up and order take out? Don't you see an issue of every single person decides to do this in your neighborhood, traffic being the first thing. The other issue too, is most people are renting out apartments, and then Airbnbing them. Like, at that point it's not y…

> Let's take this to the extreme, do you think you have a right to set up a commercial kitchen in your home, and set up patio furniture for random people to show up and order take out? You can do this in Japan. Why shouldn't you be able to do this?

Japan doesn't have nearly as many cars per capita.

Regards you can't just ignore zoning laws because you feel like it.

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

#238

Post by schrijver »

paxys wrote: post #57
jliptzin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

The parent you’re replying too has no problem with tenant-friendly laws: rather, these occupation limits are both tenant and owner unfriendly, because you can’t live together in non-family arrangements that you might prefer (as a tenant or as owner). I sympathize.

With regards to your example, if you’re rich enough to be able to afford leaving a property you own empty, then I have little sympathy. It seems like their cities and states should introduce a sizeable vacancy tax. Or, as they did in Amsterdam in the 1980ies, tolerate squatting. And yes, maybe see if there’s something that can be done about backlogs in eviction court, but the baseline for me is that it should never be feasible for an owner to leave their house empty.

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

#239

Post by scruple »

setr wrote: post #158
scruple wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A home 2 doors down from myself had been empty since the neighborhood was built in 2016 until 2020 when rental prices in our neighborhood blew through the ceiling. I always assumed their financial calculus was such that the appreciation alone, on an empty home, was a better prospect to them than what they could've gotten in rent in those earlier years (weighted against upkeep/maintenance vs. leaving the place empty a…

For someone renting out a single home, I think it’s the risk of a bad tenant much more than the basic calculations — as GP said, there’s really nothing you can do about it. I personally know a case of a misbehaving tenant not paying rent beyond the first two months pre-payment, submitted a fraudulent check for the first actual payment, had neighbor complaints endlessly with repeat HoA fines (fines given to owner, of…

Like another commenter mentioned, you'd real think that in the interest of addressing the housing shortage that there be some better solutions for these problems on both ends of the spectrum.

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

#240

Post by BirdieNZ »

civilized wrote: post #67
jrvarela56 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 GP is top 2% of their generation but not necessarily top 2% of the area they're looking into. Sounds fairer when put that way.

Yes. The problem is: 1. A lot of high earners want to cram into a small space 2. The existing high earners living in that space don't want to allow more built in that space because they like the neighborhood how it is So all these high earners compete against each other, and houses become as expensive the winning high-earning bidders can afford. For this to stop happening, #1 or #2 needs to stop. So, either the high…

Per-unit rent will go down if you increase supply of housing, but the value of the land underneath will go up if you increase the amount of houses allowed to be built on said land. There's one part of "standard economics" that a lot of people forget with property, which is that land in desirable locations is of limited supply and you cannot increase its supply.

Land at the boundaries of a city is not equivalent with land in the centre, because of location value.

I do agree that #2 should stop, but be warned that it doesn't solve land values going sky-high; it actually increases land values. The solution is land value tax, a la Henry George.

Post reply on HN