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Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

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Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#191

Post by nradov »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #146
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask why? I'm also looking to buy a house and the Zillow offerings, from what I've seen, are not particularly competitive. They don't seem to care much about the quality of their housing stock. I'd also be leery of dealing with someone removed from the initial seller. It sounds like a great way to "launder" issues with the home where Zillow can say "eh, we didn't know about that."

> Can I ask why? I'm also looking to buy a house and the Zillow offerings, from what I've seen, are not particularly competitive. I agree. (I'm not buying from them.) I am having to deal with sellers who change their ask at the last minute, have past financial issues (if something goes wrong and I have to sue, will they have assets?), want to stay through the winter, et cetera . In most home purchases, expedience isn…

Checking if the seller has assets in case you have to sue is just bizarre. That's not how residential real estate works.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#192

Post by KaiserPro »

VRay wrote: post #174
drnonsense42 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real estate speculation has likely been around for thousands of years; it’s certainly not new. But, do you see any difference between A. individuals in the mid-2000s speculating on real estate based on individual whims and taking out mortgages they should not and B. large corporations with access to massive datasets previously unavailable, teams of PhDs trained to work on this, equipped with game-changing modeling ca…

those hedge funds don't have access to enough money to move the market that much $2.6 billion is chump change to a medium-sized city with a few hundred thousand residents, much less the US at large We just need to remove zoning restrictions so that market forces can bring houses back down to being an affordable, depreciating asset. https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

> $2.6 billion is chump change

For the entire US yes. For new york city, that's just under ~3% of total sales. Given how fundamentally illiquid residential housing market is, thats more than enough to push prices up/down as the player sees fit.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#193

Post by sigstoat »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #90
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zillow getting into flipping seems questionable to me. The customers are no longer aligned with the company on goals with something like this I'm currently looking to buy a house. Having a Zillow in between the seller and myself (as a dealer, not a broker) wouldn't be a slam dunk, but it would be worth some non-zero premium to me. (Just offering a counterpoint to the "uselessly driving up prices" narrative.)

Can I ask why? I'm also looking to buy a house and the Zillow offerings, from what I've seen, are not particularly competitive. They don't seem to care much about the quality of their housing stock. I'd also be leery of dealing with someone removed from the initial seller. It sounds like a great way to "launder" issues with the home where Zillow can say "eh, we didn't know about that."

> Can I ask why?

john q homeowner (probably) generates significantly more counterparty risk in transactions than giant corporation's house flipping algorithm.

no shortage of stories of home sellers doing all sorts of weird shit, that zillow et al just wouldn't have time/energy to engage in.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#194

Post by JohnWhigham »

SN76477 wrote: post #77

I hope this bubble bursts. In less than 3 years the rent in our working class city went up 45%. Not to mention the absurd qualifications one needs to rent. 4 times the income to rent, very good credit and background checks. This is not sustainable for working class people.

For areas where stable jobs/people are moving to (much of the South/SW), I don't see it ending any time soon.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#195

Post by qaq »

zemo wrote: post #185
xyzelement wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In less than 3 years the rent in our working class city went up 45%. I sympathize with that but I want to make sure people understand the dynamics. Prices are driven by supply and demand. If there's only one empty apartment in the city and you're willing to pay $2000/month, I am gonna have to pay $2100 month if I want to live there instead of you. That's sort of separate (though related to) prices of houses. What w…

> one way to drive prices in your city down is to have some even that renders it undesirable (..., defund the police ...) there are so many problems with your post but the assumption that defunding the police is necessarily going to cause prices to collapse is probably the most obviously biased one. the idea that you should view housing as simply a matter of supply and demand and not consider any externalities is an…

All people need shelter but people are not entitled to shelter in any place of their choosing. Your proposed solution will increase rent prices for people who can't afford to buy a house while pushing the housing prices down and making them more affordable to middle class. So essentially you are making house purchasing more affordable to middle class at the expense of the poor and investors.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#196

Post by [deleted] »

rdudek wrote: post #113

They seem to be flipping the houses fast and hard around my neighborhood. One of my favorite things to do is walk around with the dog and see houses go up for sale. Lately, I noticed houses sold only to be relisted by Zillow like 30 days later at $50k+ the original price. And they actually seem to be able to sell them that high. My house is currently worth 3x what I paid for it back in summer of 2013.

[deleted]

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#197

Post by BizarroLand »

ineedasername wrote: post #159
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Mortgage rates are so low that even with only 5% down the monthly mortgage payments on a $400K house are similar to what someone would be paying for monthly rent in these cities. Mortgage rates are incredibly low and there are a number of options to reduce down payment requirements right now. Meanwhile, wages are up and better paying jobs are more common for young people. $400K isn’t out of reach at all f…

I'm not so sure: At current rates, assuming excellent credit, that's about $1700/month. If you're anywhere near the suburbs of a city, you can add another $500 to $1500/month in property taxes, and sometimes another $100 to $400/month in HOA fees. on that for a total pre-utility rate of ~$2400-$3600/month or roughly $30k to $43/ year. I live in the higher end of that range even though I'm in a modest home in a lower-…

I think you're overlooking married millennials, many of whom are in their late 20's-late 30's and many of whom have no children, and many of whom are two-income families.

A $400k home would be quite affordable if each of them were earning an average of $24/hr or more, which isn't too crazy.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#198

Post by humanistbot »

xyzelement wrote: post #87
SN76477 wrote: post #77

I hope this bubble bursts. In less than 3 years the rent in our working class city went up 45%. Not to mention the absurd qualifications one needs to rent. 4 times the income to rent, very good credit and background checks. This is not sustainable for working class people.

> In less than 3 years the rent in our working class city went up 45%. I sympathize with that but I want to make sure people understand the dynamics. Prices are driven by supply and demand. If there's only one empty apartment in the city and you're willing to pay $2000/month, I am gonna have to pay $2100 month if I want to live there instead of you. That's sort of separate (though related to) prices of houses. What w…

You're omitting a major component of the demand side: investors and speculators. If the market was just made up of the people who are looking to live in those homes, the market would be reasonable for those people. But we have a massive amount of investment funds looking for returns in an uncertain market, plus near zero interest rates for the near future. The number of investors who are buying houses they have no intention to live in is skyrocketing, either to rent out, to flip, or just to hold vacant in the hope values keep rising.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#199

Post by nradov »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #93
jdhn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not to mention the absurd qualifications one needs to rent. This was probably prompted by the Covid rent restrictions. Landlords (especially smaller ones) don't want to rent to someone who can avoid paying rent due to government decrees.

Ya, you can’t restrict the market and still keep it capitalist. In Seattle, new regulations on price increases along with an indeterminate moratorium on evictions is definitely going to make landlords really careful on credit checks. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the low end rental markets disappear completely as they become too risky to operate in as landlords.

At the very low end there will still be a market for Section 8 housing.

Re: Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

#200

Post by treeman79 »

andrewmutz wrote: post #189
altacc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be too quick to claim that the myth of institutional house buying has been dispelled. Zillow isn't the only company out there buying real estate, and they are planning to sell most of the properties to other institutions and landlords, not the open market of owner occupiers. It appears they made some errors in their calculations and temporarily bought too many houses at too high a price but the article say…

I've never seen any good data that supported the myth of institutional house buying being a big enough phenomenon to affect homeowners. It was never apparent in the homeownership rate ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N ) which has been broadly stable for decades, and the jumps over the last few years are, if anything, towards increased homeownership, not less.

Yet when I look to rent a home better then half the homes are owned by mega corps. A group I will never rent from again.

They need to at least have a home inspection and a report for tenants. Would have saved us from permanent injuries.

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