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How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

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

#301

Post by a1pulley »

tshaddox wrote: post #197
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…

> A thought exercise: suppose that no new houses are ever built and that housing turnover is nearly zero. What happens to the price of housing in that limit? Market forces do not necessarily entitle the top n% of the income distribution to housing. I don't think it's disturbing because "clearly the top 2% of income earners should be entitled to housing," but because clearly everyone needs housing, and if the top 2% o…

Owning and having are not the same thing: you can have housing while renting it, receiving it as a gift from parents or your spouse, etc.

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

#302

Post by [deleted] »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #275
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.

Most people in the world live and raise families in the conditions where they don't control what happens behind the floor, walls and ceilings. This seems like very strong entitlement.

[deleted]

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

#303

Post by wwweston »

anchpop wrote: post #287
wwweston wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can't do much if you stop paying rent. I'm aware of specific stories where bad-faith tenants have made enforcement difficult , but I'm also aware of enough specific stories from the other side where tenants -- even some who have committed no violations -- have found themselves without housing to know that as a total generalization, these statements are false. And you don't get to a resident-sourced homelessnes…

> I'm aware of specific stories where bad-faith tenants have made enforcement difficult, but I'm also aware of enough specific stories from the other side where tenants -- even some who have committed no violations -- have found themselves without housing to know that as a total generalization, these statements are false. I'm aware of hundreds of stories about homicidal cardiologists, but I wouldn't try to make a jud…

Sure. As the saying goes "the plural of anecdote is not data." And that goes as much for specific stories about sympathetic landlords suffering from abusive tenants as vice versa.

How would we find out what the systemic pattern is? Maybe we'd compile relevant court records and outcomes. Maybe we'd collect information from tax filings.

Or maybe we'd make bare assertions on HN.

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

#304

Post by rdtwo »

MiroF wrote: post #136
gnicholas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend bought a duplex in Berkeley. Due to the tenant-friendly laws there, she will only rent to international university affiliates whose roles/visas will require them to leave after a year or two. Interestingly, she is very YIMBY and liberal, and even has a PhD in urban planning. But no one wants a forever tenant!

You're not a liberal if you're casually violating fair housing law :) Everyone wants to call themselves a liberal or progressive nowadays, it's bizarre. These things are about actions, not self-assigned labels.

Liberals can break laws just like conservatives can. Free country

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

#305

Post by notahacker »

creaghpatr wrote: post #142
harikb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I have always been annoyed by Redfin's rewrite of history. At least have the decency to show two lines (original prediction for last year and how it turned out to be).

Same, I find this to be a bizarre practice. What's the point if the snapshots are revised?

I assume the rationale is that it's are supposed to be an indicator of the actual value of the property at a point in time, not the accuracy of their algorithm at that point in time. So if they update with new information, it's assumed that instead of the price suddenly jumping (which looks very odd if you're trying to understand a local property market), the original snapshots are assumed to have been wrong

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

#306

Post by mistrial9 »

natas wrote: post #267

Based on S4 forms, Zillow execs made a cumulative $1.3B from what might have been called a ponzi scheme, so it was overall well played.

> so it was overall well played

in one breath it is overtly and explicitly illegal, second breath same sentence.. "wellplayed" .. any red flags here?

I have heard "contemporaneously, during the Fall of Rome, there was a precipitous rise in the number of lawyers"...

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

#307

Post by ar_lan »

paxys wrote: post #40
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #9

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,…

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.

NIMBYs are a special breed of evil

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

#308

Post by cma »

paxys wrote: post #221
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…

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. Same goes for every other "necessary to life" product. Temporary disruptions will be handled by the market in the long term, and in the worst case government can step in and regulate. Housing is probably the only sector where all the laws and r…

> Housing is probably the only sector where all the laws and regulations work the other way – to actively stop you from building more of something that everyone needs.

The patent system does this in medicine.

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

#309

Post by pfisherman »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #177
999900000999 wrote: post #167

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?

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.

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

#310

Post by adam_arthur »

paxys wrote: post #40
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #9

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,…

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.

Number of housing units to households is the same as year 2000. 1.1:1

So the undersupply story is a myth. There has been a recent pull forward in demand that ate through all active listings though.

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