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How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

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541–550 of 684 posts

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

#541
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine is pretty accurate as well ($44.8M), based on recent mentions in Architectural Digest and a couple of solicitations from fellow G650 owners.

There isn't exactly a large market for homes at that price point. Plus at that price, a thorough DD is an order. So not unexpected that your home's value would be accurate.

What's "a thorough DD"? I assume it's building on the previous joke but I don't recognize the abbreviation.

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

#542
post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it's not that wealthy people are buying and hoarding homes. This is exactly what buy to let landlords are doing.

If they are renting them out, the homes are not being hoarded, they are being lived in. The real problem isn't a problem of vacant units, it's a problem of unbuilt units.

This results in a transient population and concentration of wealth, and reduced overall housing security. A mortgage doesn't go up by 10% every year, but my rent sure does.

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

#543

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.

The prinicipal of separation of concerns should be all you need for a legal reason for keeping listing companies like zillow from also participating in the market. Clearly they are a company, company's only limitations are they exist to make as much money as possible for share holders and they have no morals, only regulations and laws limit their actions. Therefore they shouldn't be in the business of buying/selling…

Separation of concerns is not a legal concept.

Zillow does not have any fundamental control over the market. They do not have any obligation to show true prices. They are a private entity who happens to offer price estimates a service. Nobody is ever forced to buy or sell at that price.

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

#544
post #521
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thing is if people start hoarding medicine then new companies can pop up and fill in the gap, or existing ones can increase production, making the whole thing pointless to do. Hoarding medicine isn't a trend and even so, this market correction doesn't happen. Look at all the medicines with insanely high prices because there won't be any competition.

Some medicines are high price because of market intervention by gov't (or regulatory capture) - like epi-pens. Some medicines are high priced because noone really needs it, and the few remaining bear the brunt of the cost (or society subsidize the cost via taxation). How come aspirin or penicillin isn't expensive? They are more commonly used, and so if the hoarding method works, it would've been even more profitable!

How come insulin is expensive?

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

#545

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?

I think people would be mostly fine with it if it were only "for a few days", but it's not.

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

#546

The scary thing is that it's easy to see how something how like this could drive a market boom and bust cycle. I'm imagining a scenario where two iBuyer companies try to outbid each other algorithmically, driving the prices further and further out of reach of people who are looking for a primary home. Tangentially related, I talked to a friend who works on geospatial data for one of the big vacation rental companies,…

This has perplexed me as well. Here in the UK, the top 1% of incomes is £175K. Assuming the bank lets you borrow 5x, and you're married to someone with a more middling income, you can borrow ~£1M. Yet there's a ring around London where it's hard to see any family homes that are under £1M. I mean sure maybe they're sitting on equity or mom and dad are contributing, but by my estimation there are a huge number of peopl…

I wouldn't underestimate the effect of equity - property prices in London have effectively doubled over the past decade, so there's a lot of people who bought a decade ago sitting on hundreds of £ks of unearned equity. The borrowing limits in the UK (4.5x salary) have quite a lot of headroom before interest rates make them completely unaffordable (assuming there's not a mass reduction in salary at the same time).

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

#547
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you feel if I paid your next door neighbor to store radioactive waste in their yard? What if I paid them to demolish their home and put up a giant flashing billboard facing your bedroom window? Do you think it would impact the value of you property? Do you think that would be fair? People care because it is a matter of justice, which is one of the fundamental precepts of society.

So what if a NIMBY pays to stop rezoning to high density in their suburb? Isn't it the same then?

If you account for societal benefits and not just the owner's personal gain then I don't think they are the same.

It's really just matter whether you view regulations as legitimate tool to curve/change behaviors that you think are detrimental to society.

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

#548

The scary thing is that it's easy to see how something how like this could drive a market boom and bust cycle. I'm imagining a scenario where two iBuyer companies try to outbid each other algorithmically, driving the prices further and further out of reach of people who are looking for a primary home. Tangentially related, I talked to a friend who works on geospatial data for one of the big vacation rental companies,…

The problem is not about homes being overpriced.

The truth is that there is much much much more money in the middle class globally (almost 3x that of 2000) and on top of that the normal inflation, and freezing of supply.

As long as “desirable location” stay the same, and the amount of people affording it growing so significantly. The expectation of being able to afford one is a strange one.

See https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/world-reimagined%3A-the-rise...

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

#549
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 someone not from America, this seems insane to me. Who's stopping you from renting not living with people you aren't related to and why the hell are they allowed to tell you what to do with your own bedrooms? Equally, is 6 bedrooms normal? Sounds like a lot of cleaning.

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

#550
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what if a NIMBY pays to stop rezoning to high density in their suburb? Isn't it the same then?

If you account for societal benefits and not just the owner's personal gain then I don't think they are the same. It's really just matter whether you view regulations as legitimate tool to curve/change behaviors that you think are detrimental to society.

Legislating morality has been an utter failure. And here you advocating for legislating not morality but your own personal feelings and experiences. I take an issue with the entitlement that other people should change their behavior to protect your housing prices
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