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How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

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

#341

Post by nunez »

bombcar wrote: post #140
TimPC wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These laws are hard to get actually correct. The major problem is court delays. There is a very high bar for kicking someone out before they get their day in court about whether it is fair to do so. This seems eminently reasonable but there is also a severe shortage of judicial services that result in court dates over a year out to resolve such issues. In that year of time, it's quite possible for a tenant with maybe…

From what I've heard is a common thing for landlords to do is a "pay to vacate" where they show up at the door with $1k in cash if the tenant will just leave.

if you go onto /r/landlord, you'll learn that "cash for keys" is (a) usually way more than $1k, and (b) not a fool-proof way of kicking someone out (since the squatter still need a place to live, and they know that the cash won't cover it). this was/is a huge HUGE issue with the COVID real estate moratoriums that popped up.

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

#342

Post by MuffinFlavored »

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,…

> 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.

This is just my personal anecdote but... I'm pretty sure when I was rushing to show up to "new listings" on the weekends and waiting in line for 10-40 families to get a walkthrough "open house" wise, I feel like the sellers were going to pick a family that showed up over a Zillow website. What % of closed houses were being bought by families instead of "iBuyers" as you said it?

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

#343

Post by nunez »

dataflow wrote: post #202
TimPC wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These laws are hard to get actually correct. The major problem is court delays. There is a very high bar for kicking someone out before they get their day in court about whether it is fair to do so. This seems eminently reasonable but there is also a severe shortage of judicial services that result in court dates over a year out to resolve such issues. In that year of time, it's quite possible for a tenant with maybe…

How does one accumulate $500K in damages and debt in 1 year? That's like $41k/month.

buy three cats, and zero litter boxes, and zero litter. make sure they aren't neutered. get a single male cat since, hey, he's got needs.

cook lots of greasy ass food and drain that oil straight down the sink. toss condoms, paper towels, hell, ANYTHING, down the toilet, since it's basically a trash dispenser, right?

once you're done having the cats pee their way through the foundation (cat urine DESTROYS houses) and destroying the plumbing, steal some copper on your way out with some friends.

oh, and this is a pre-war establishment where everything is absolutely not up to code.

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

#344

Post by nunez »

MiroF wrote: post #143
Teknoman117 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. This is one of those things that really just confuses me. It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". And to whoever downvoted yo…

> It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". No place in the US actually has the latter unless you've been letting them squat for half a decade or something, the issue is court delays and landlord's wanting to make their lot out to be worse than it is.

covid moratoriums were basically that for a lot of landlords

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

#345

Post by Firmwarrior »

anchpop wrote: post #291
giraffe_lady wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords have chosen to enter an inherently adversarial relationship with the goal of profiting from the other party. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to their personal pains here, but I don't believe "pro tenant" has a useful meaning except in a context where you need to support them in opposition to some force or entity. And that entity is landlords.

As a widget maker, I'm pro widget-users even though I technically have an adversarial relationship with them. In particular, I'm pro widget-users because without them I would be without money and without me they would be without widgets, so we're both supporting each other against the harsh forces of nature that would leave us all destitute if we didn't work together.

> without me they would be without widgets

It seems like it'd be obvious, but landlords don't actually produce land or provide housing. They roll in and take housing using their superior resources, then charge rent to access it.

In an ideal market, every renter would have the option of being a landlord just like every car lessor has the option of being a car owner. We just need enough housing supply to make investing in housing a risky venture instead of a government-guaranteed winner

https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

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

#346

Post by giraffe_lady »

endisneigh wrote: post #297
giraffe_lady wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords have chosen to enter an inherently adversarial relationship with the goal of profiting from the other party. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to their personal pains here, but I don't believe "pro tenant" has a useful meaning except in a context where you need to support them in opposition to some force or entity. And that entity is landlords.

How exactly is it inherently adversarial? Isn’t what you’re saying also true to literally any for profit transaction?

Only things that are absolute needs. You can walk away from a profitable transaction, you can't walk away from one you'll die without.

People are willing to take much more extreme action around housing (and food, medicine, ) than they are most other goods. They're also less likely to agree there is moral justification in profiting from these things. So even when entering these transactions (they must, after all), they may not respect the other party's profit goals.

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

#347

Post by jjav »

schrijver wrote: post #250
tristor wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prefer to keep their condos/houses empty rather than rent them out at market rate because of 100% tenant friendly city and state laws. Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. I'm in this situation right now. The only way I'll rent it out is if I personally know the tenant and their personal chara…

This is so alien to me. Why don’t you sell the place? Staying the owner of this place makes it so that you can’t spend your money tied up in this house, and this house can’t provide its roof to someone. Seems like both of you loose.

> This is so alien to me. Why don’t you sell the place?

Selling might trigger a very large tax liability, depending on original cost vs. current price. When that is the case, it's better to keep it in case you might want to return to the area in the future.

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

#348

Post by MiroF »

jjav wrote: post #336
MiroF wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". No place in the US actually has the latter unless you've been letting them squat for half a decade or something, the issue is court delays and landlord's wanting to make their lot out to be worse than it is.

> > "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". > No place in the US actually has the latter Not technically, no. But there are areas (e.g. San Francisco) where getting a non-paying tenant out is close enough to impossible that it might as well be.

> But there are areas (e.g. San Francisco) where getting a non-paying tenant out is close enough to impossible that it might as well be.

You absolutely can evict people in SF, unless you are discussing the recent eviction moratorium, which is not ongoing.

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

#349

Post by giraffe_lady »

baq wrote: post #331
giraffe_lady wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords have chosen to enter an inherently adversarial relationship with the goal of profiting from the other party. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to their personal pains here, but I don't believe "pro tenant" has a useful meaning except in a context where you need to support them in opposition to some force or entity. And that entity is landlords.

If there’s return, there’s risk. All markets are adversarial.

Yeah I don't really disagree with that. I don't believe housing should be a "market" in the sense I think is meant here. But if it is to be, I agree that landlords need to accept the risk of their tenants not paying and not leaving either.

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

#350

Post by ianferrel »

jjice wrote: post #39

It's such a glaring red flag that one of the largest public resources for getting pricing information on housing is also buying and selling that housing. Come on, this is so glaringly abusable that any teenager could tell you what's wrong.

And yet they lost hundreds of millions, so maybe not as abusable as you might imagine.
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