How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by astura » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #215

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…

Could you not put ejection conditions in the lease itself? (SF resident here, but with no experience in landlording). I'm wondering why can't a landlord put in the lease a term like "if tenant does not pay rent for 30 days, tenant gives up all of his rights and landlord has the right to eject tenant within 15 days".

You generally can't put illegal terms in a contact like that.

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

#252

Post by giraffe_lady » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

jsnk wrote: post #224

tshaddox wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the population rises and we refuse to build more houses Building more houses is generally good too, but it's a bit of a cop-out to blame the whole situation on that. Totally independent of supply concerns, I would argue that it's not great that in so many areas the value of homes seems to be almost entirely divorced from the fact that people need homes to live in . Imagine if a bunch of very wealthy people just…

This analogy is quite lacking. You should also mention that this medicine rich people are collecting also has dozens of other alternative medicines with hundreds of thousands in volume because other cities exist. Also you should mention that some of these rich people are not rich people at all, but working class people who's lived in a location for decades which has become a desirable location in recent years thanks…

Cites are not fungible, I hate that this always comes up. I have relationships here going back to my childhood, I sometimes visit the grave of the person I am named for, I spend every sunday afternoon cooking and eating with the 97-year-old who took me in and nursed me back to health decades ago. If I move to another city these things aren't coming with.

Now you can dismiss these things as inherently less meaningful than, and therefore rightly subjected to, the economic desires of asset holders. That's a much more radical position than I think you're wanting to take here though. When you say or imply people facing unaffordable housing can just move somewhere else, this is a position you're endorsing.

The analogy doesn't have to cover every nuance of the situation to be valuable. A necessity of life has become a competitive investment vehicle, and the people most hurt by this are told that it is good and correct and they should accept it by wildly upending their lives for no personal benefit.

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

#253

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

afterburner wrote: post #247

lotsofpulp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you illustrate the mechanism of abuse? Pricing information on housing is readily available to almost everyone, outside of the couple stated that do not mandate it. Zillow makes it easier, but Redfin and realtor.com and countyoffice.org and other websites offer the same information scraped from municipal websites.

Zillow could lie about regional home values and blame it on their "secret sauce".

Why would anyone trust Zillow’s opinions over anyone else’s opinion? Everyone has access to the same historical sales data that the market actually cleared at. In fact, it is has never been easier for the average person to research historical sales information. They can filter the parameters of the house they are interested in the area they are interested and find all the previous sales data, all while sitting on the toilet, thanks to websites like Redfin and Zillow.

They can “lie” all they want, it makes no difference to what price a house sells for.

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

#254

Post by tomrod » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #123

a1pulley wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's honestly quite scary how I'm in the top 2% of income earners in my generation and yet I could barely afford to buy a small place in a semi-desirable area. I can easily see myself not being able to compete in algorithmically dominated markets flush with venture cash in the future and I earn more than just about everybody I know today. A thought exercise: suppose that no new houses are ever built and that housin…

> > It's honestly quite scary how I'm in the top 2% of income earners in my generation and yet I could barely afford to buy a small place > I live in Los Angeles, where a "small place in semi-desirable area" gets listed for 1.5M and goes for nearly 2M. I'm somewhere in the top 5% of earners in California, but that $2M 1950s tract housing would be >50% of my post-tax income. I think the obvious answer here is that peo…

Agreed with your analysis, and add previous homeowners who can sell quickly and are making the cash from the equity.

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

#255

Post by gnopgnip » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

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.

Many of these laws are a family plus two unrelated people. There have been broad changes in how a family is defined in this context.

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

#256

Post by programmarchy » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

MiroF wrote: post #153

programmarchy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a family home, you probably don’t want 8 college students moving into the house next door to you. This was a restriction in my college town. As a student, I didn’t like it, but as a homeowner with a family, I completely understand.

If you want to control who lives next to you, feel free to buy the neighboring properties.

Thankfully, I don't live in ancapistan, so I can vote instead.

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

#257

Post by ipaddr » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

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…

It can happen because new homes are more expensive. People prefer new and will pay more. That raises the average price which raises prices on the existing supply.

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

#258

Post by ipaddr » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #22

rank0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people should expand what "desirable" means to them. There's a ton of suitable houses all over the country. Everyone seems to need to own a SFH in a trendy part of a trendy city.

Are there jobs near those houses? Specialist doctors? Good schools? I WFH so I could probably buy one of those houses, but most of my friends in my age bracket are expected to show up to an office 5 days a week, so those suitable houses are no good for them.

If you work from home you go to good remote schools and see the best doctors remotely.

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

#259

Post by bluGill » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #72

bell-cot wrote: post #23

Reminds me of an old guy in knew back in the early 90's. His (quite nice) house was on a lot shaped like "well, that was the leftovers, after we gave all the other houses reasonable lots". Every year, the City tried to raise his property's assessed value by ~10% more than the neighborhood's average increase. And every time that his house sold (he had decades of records, to support his appeals of their over-assessment…

I've often wished that one avenue of appeal of a city assessment was an option given to the property owner to force the city to buy the property for 90% of what they assessed it. You could either go through the current appeals process or just sell them the house if they were way off.

Where I live the assessed value is a complex formula only somewhat related to real estate values. My house might be say $500k, but it should assess for about $380k. So I'm losing long before it would be worth a buyout

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

#260

Post by giraffe_lady » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

dijonman2 wrote: post #229

MiroF wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It’s very difficult to evict folks in Colorado, according to someone I know who buys and rents homes for a living. I think most landlords are pro tenant until they find someone who knows how to work the system. It costs them so much that they are skiddish to all renters.

Landlords have chosen to enter an inherently adversarial relationship with the goal of profiting from the other party. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to their personal pains here, but I don't believe "pro tenant" has a useful meaning except in a context where you need to support them in opposition to some force or entity. And that entity is landlords.