How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

This seems to be pretty common where I'm living in Mexico and is also pretty great. But also everywhere is walkable and no one is driving their canyonero to go and pick up tacos.

This is a brilliant idea, and if I ever sold my house I would want to do it this way.

Unfortunately most homeowners are debt-leveraged out the wazoo as a result of the artificially low interest rates we've had for the past decade. Once you filter out people who aren't looking to move the remaining cohort is homedebtors. Although something like 1/3rd of homeowners own their house outright those tend not to be the ones looking to move or flip.

Right. NYC is a bad example of "international rich buying units not to live in and making it more expensive for everyone else." It does happen, and it is a hedge for international investors, but it's not always cost-effective - unlike London, and I can explain why.

Of the NYC housing stock, close to 63% are rentals. Of the rentals, more than half are regulated (stabilized mostly). Of the owned homes, you have houses, condos and co-ops. Co-ops predominate in Manhattan (where you'd expect the rich to want to live), but condos only make up the smallest fraction of the for-sale home types (115K according to 2017 statistics).

Of the condos, if you're an international rich you want low carry and maintenance costs. So typically they buy the "tax abated" new luxury condos, and sure they accept to eat the maintenance costs. But if they want to eat the taxes, those can be ginormous, a quick streeteasy search will confirm.

NYC is just a pain to do that in unless you want to be there part of the time. Paris is like that - you buy for your trips every few months to go shopping, or whatever rich people do.

London is better, the carry costs are lower, being instead of property taxes they rely on council taxes, which first of all are WAY lower than anything property tax in the U.S. (not the least of which NY State), but secondly they capture more tax from the exchange (stamp duty).

As always it's fine to explore injustice and sources of inequality, but we have to be nuanced and analytical before we repeat the slogans.

P.S. - the link above is from 2021. Yes, in summer of 2021 the luxury units were empty because NYC was a shitty place to live in 2021, not the least of which because of how much had closed up, how much was still not opening, and how unpleasant the sidewalks were. So if you're a luxury rich person, you're going to spend the summer where there are mountains or beaches.

Sources: https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uplo...

You are right, here are the seattle FAQ on first qualified applications:

> Yes. The first-in-time requirement applies to duplexes and triplexes even if the owner resides in one of the units. The non-owner occupied units are considered separate dwellings, and therefore are subject to the Seattle Open Housing Ordinance, which includes the first-in-time provisions.

The other two points where exceptions exists are for accessory dwelling units and (as I stated previously) when the owner lives in the same spaces being rented out, see http://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/CivilRights/Fai...

Now if the lady in question was renting out the basement, that might count as an accessory dwelling unit, and she would be exempt under Seattle rules (but this is in SF, so the rules would be different).

My guess is that as long as she doesn't advertise the unit (in the sense that she put it up for application), she can simply mention its availability to a small network that conveys it by word of mouth. It is impossible to legislate that kind of discrimination, there are tons of units that don't officially go on the market (via advertising on zillow, for example) but still get rented out.

That condo prices are staying flat is fantastic news.

Now we just need to build condos that are appropriate for all stages of life -- not just young singlehood and coupledom.

Building up will not solve the "not enough SFH/townhomes" problem, but it will fix the homeownership problem. And it may help with the former, if there are enough current SFH/townhome owners who would prefer a really nice condo close to work/downtown/parks/amenities/etc.

But one issue there is that we currently build condos but don't build the public spaces that serve to supplement them and make them comfortable for, e.g., families with kids. As a result, they're full of a certain demographic, and less appealing to others, reinforcing the issue.