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How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

fullstackeconomics.com

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

#611

Post by dragonwriter »

bastawhiz wrote: post #608
moonchrome wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative being to ask above market the house so it sits on the market for longer ? I don't understand what Zillow changes in this story ? (I'm genuinely curious - not from US)

Zillow eliminates the notion of showings as an event. They plug in a smart lock and (at least to my understanding) you can tour the minute the listing goes up. There's no rushing to showings, your can tour any house that's in their portfolio on the market.

> Zillow eliminates the notion of showings as an event

Showings aren't an event unless the seller (perhaps through their agent) decides they should be.

> They plug in a smart lock and (at least to my understanding) you can tour the minute the listing goes up.

A lockbox with a key that buyers agents can get access to has been routine for sales of homes where the seller doesn't actively choose to limit showing for a long time; changing the technology doesn't fundamentally change anything. If access is made directly to buyers that would be a slight change in accessibility (also an increase in risk for the seller), but not, in practice, a huge difference.

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

#612

Post by BucketsMcG »

bliteben wrote: post #593
BucketsMcG wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm concerned the quality-of-life tradeoff heavily favours higher-density housing. I live in an apartment block and so does everybody else for miles around. Our building, like almost every other around here, tops out at seven storeys. It's very solidly constructed, so there's little to no noise from neighbours, not that they make much noise to begin with as they're a pretty considerate bunch. The downside t…

You might as well live in the matrix, you seem to live in an artificial world with no connection to nature. I myself desire to live on the edge of "civilization" as much as I can, I know this presents a conundrum in that I'm creating a market for destroying it, but this is a human condition as old as time.

20-30 minutes on a bike and I'm out in the sticks, a bit further and there are forests and lakes aplenty. Higher-density living means less sprawl and a shorter distance from city centre to back of beyond.

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

#613

Post by staticman2 »

lelanthran wrote: post #586
registeredcorn wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the response! Honestly, I was going to delete my comment, I felt like I was asking in bad faith, but can't since it had a reply. I guess I see your point. I tend to side a bit harder with the landlords, but I don't want people tossed out on the streets without any sort of warning either.

> I tend to side a bit harder with the landlords, but I don't want people tossed out on the streets without any sort of warning either. I expect that that hardly ever happens. Landlords aren't in the business to make life unnecessarily bad for renters, they're there to make money. A tenant who stayed in the same place for 3 years, always pays on time and never damages the property is preferably to an unknown. Landlor…

Landlords rarely kick people out without notice because society has made it illegal for them to do so.

Your take is naive. Historically there was a lot of money to be made being a "slum lord" and renting in poorer communities where people have bad credit so can't get mortgages , there's a reason the term exists.

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

#614

Post by pyuser583 »

chii wrote: post #528
pyuser583 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! This comes up a lot when people argue in favor reforming how real estate is taxed. When real estate isn’t for sale, it’s “value” is synthetic. I wouldn’t actually sell my house for less than 400% what similar homes are worth. For some people that means the value is 400% that of similar homes. Thankfully the real estate tax folks don’t see it that way.

I actually want tax valuation to work like an offer - the tax man can choose to purchase your home for the valuation you use for taxation (you don't pay the tax in that case), or accept the tax payment. if you value your house too high, you'd pay more tax than you'd need of course, but guarantee that it isn't going to be immediately bought up by the tax man. If you value it too low, you're risking a sale. So the idea…

But what if that number isn’t near what anyone would actually pay for the house?

Say, I live next door to my child’s school, and an elderly parent I care for.

I might not sell for anything.

The “market price” has to include what people are willing to pay for the item, not just what they’re willing to sell for.

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

#615

Post by jjav »

flir wrote: post #597
refurb wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised. SF Rent Board will always seek the solution that keeps the tenant in their home. So a tenant might stop paying rent, a few months later you get an eviction hearing, but then the tenant pays the rent this month and promises to pay the back rent . Your eviction has just been denied. Tenant falls back on rent again, but made a good faith effort to pay some of the back rent. Eviction denied. Finally,…

Honestly, that sounds great. The risk of being a rentier should be higher than the risk of an index tracker. A lot of our problems can be traced to the fact that bricks and mortar are seen as a better RoI than stocks and shares, and one way to fix that is to change the risk profile of being a landlord by increasing tenants' rights.

> Honestly, that sounds great.

You're saying that it's totally fine for a renter to pay like one month out of every six months and keep doing that forever, just enough to defer evictions each time?

> The risk of being a rentier should be higher than the risk of an index tracker.

Risk and return should roughly correlate, or people will not do it. There is already very little return in renting out a house, so the risk needs to be fairly low, if society cares to have rental properties available.

> change the risk profile of being a landlord by increasing tenants' rights

What would you expect to happen as a result?

If the risk is too high to compared to the return, these rental units are simply removed from the market. Are you convinced that less available units make renters better off?

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

#616

Post by dataexporter »

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…

I'm perplexed to see that you are afraid of random people coming into your neighborhood. In fact I'm more perplexing about the zoning laws in America.

What you mentioned is a very common thing in multiple countries - No one is afraid of random people coming into the neighborhood. (Neither do they all have guns to protect themselves).

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

#617

Post by mdaniel »

ccvannorman wrote: post #503
mwt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some poetry in older banks claiming they're pivoting to being tech companies (i.e. Capital One) while some tech companies are heading straight towards being banks.

It was surprising to me to learn that airlines are basically banks https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/rgkne9/how_a...

If one enjoys Wendover videos, there was a recent one about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4

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

#618

Post by mdaniel »

jdross wrote: post #463
JKCalhoun wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why the article goes to such lengths to legitimize "Corporate flipping", calling it iBuying or whatever. No matter what terminology you use, buyers without cash-in-hand are getting screwed.

look up Opendoor’s buy with cash product. Turns every buyer into a cash buyer in exchange for the same commission as any other buyer agent (maybe lower?)

Flyhomes is in that game, too: https://www.flyhomes.com/

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

#619

Post by clhodapp »

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #439
pj_mukh wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land is a finite resource but housing units are not. Once America gets over it’s love affair with single family homes, we could undercut most speculators by just building up.

Single Family homes have the benefit of more autonomy where as building up means you're living on-top of your neighbor, its not binary but we should acknowledge the clear QoL tradeoffs of condensed living. Maybe its inevitable and necessary to force more people into condensed housing, maybe the societal benefits really outweigh the tradeoffs.

If people can reasonably afford a (non-tiny) condo but pine after a single family home that they can't afford, there isn't a housing crisis there's economic diversity.

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

#620

Post by giraffe_lady »

bawolff wrote: post #607
giraffe_lady wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because you can't really decline to have a home if none of the options are good for you. If there are only shitty landlords then you'll be forced to choose a shitty landlord.

I can't decline to eat. Food still costs money.

Yes almost there keep going.
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