Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

fullstackeconomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 684 posts

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

#381

Post by seanmcdirmid »

MiroF wrote: post #199
Cederfjard wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious as an outsider, what laws are she breaking by doing that?

Civil Rights Act of 1968, Unruh Civil Rights Act, ... there are a few other California specific legal statutes around civil rights/housing discrimination.

If you are sharing your own house vs renting out an autonomous unit, the rules are different (at least here in Seattle), you can discriminate a lot more legally than you could otherwise. So someone who rents room in their home only to Chinese international students is completely ok (as long as they share living space with the landlord). Not sure what the laws are in California, but federally it’s kosher.

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

#382

Post by danans »

jliptzin wrote: post #51
paxys wrote: 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.

What a terrible policy. Do you mind sharing where this is?

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

#383

Post by jjav »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #252
jsnk wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy is quite lacking. You should also mention that this medicine rich people are collecting also has dozens of other alternative medicines with hundreds of thousands in volume because other cities exist. Also you should mention that some of these rich people are not rich people at all, but working class people who's lived in a location for decades which has become a desirable location in recent years thanks…

Cites are not fungible, I hate that this always comes up. I have relationships here going back to my childhood, I sometimes visit the grave of the person I am named for, I spend every sunday afternoon cooking and eating with the 97-year-old who took me in and nursed me back to health decades ago. If I move to another city these things aren't coming with. Now you can dismiss these things as inherently less meaningful…

> If I move to another city these things aren't coming with.

This is the reason for things like California Prop 13. It gives a benefit to long-time locals to continue living in the same place. Which on the whole seems like a good thing. People can set down roots and become "locals" instead of having a city of ever-changing population who then don't really care so much about the area because they are transient and will be moving away soon.

But most housing threads on HN favor the idea that incoming outsiders should be able to efficiently displace locals as long as they have more money to do so, and thus oppose prop 13.

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

#384

Post by MrMan »

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.

where I live all they do is build houses. this idea that we arent building houses mystifies me.

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

#385

Post by 88913527 »

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?

Might as well eschew all zoning laws and turn your home into a junkyard or a industrial manufacturing facility by the same rationale: it is your home, after all.

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

#386

Post by cuteboy19 »

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…

> set up a commercial kitchen in your home, and set up patio furniture for random people to show up and order take out?

This already happens in my country. It's a great way to support entrepreneurship and small businesses. I can't imagine how authoritarian the country must be to criminalize this. Are you living in North Korea or Cuba by any chance

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

#387

Post by Drdrdrq »

MiroF wrote: post #153
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.

If you want to control who lives next to you, feel free to buy the neighboring properties.

That wouldn't help much - there would still be neighbors bordering your (now bigger) property, just further away. You need to buy an island instead.

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

#388

Post by rank0 »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #283
rank0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah those are good points. I live in a bit of a bubble where most folks around me either WFH or have to travel to work. There are absolutely "specialist doctors" in every large city though...

Is my family there? My church? The park where I learned to play soccer? My daughter's best friend? When you sit around talking about choice of living area without weighing, or even acknowledging these connections, do you realize how inhuman this sounds? Do you not have similar things binding you to a place? Shit even specialist doctors, have you ever depended on one? If you're needing long-term specialist care you go…

I feel you. It’s horrible if you’ve grown up somewhere and suddenly can’t afford a home in the same spot.

But life’s unfair. Houses get sold to the highest bidder. This is what happens when everyone wants to live in the same areas. I’m not arguing that you SHOULDNT be able to afford a home in your preferred spot. I’m observing that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for everyone to own property in their preferred spot within their budget.

You can still rent, or buy cheaper homes in cheaper areas in your city.

We can’t just will affordable housing into existence when ~97% of people live on ~3% of the land.

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

#389

Post by nebula8804 »

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.

>Everyone wants to call themselves a liberal or progressive nowadays, it's bizarre.

Thats just the scam the corporate left likes to play. They love to be super "progressive" while actually performing nothing progressive other than performance art.

It costs nothing to call yourself "progressive". Hell I bet Trump has probably called himself "progressive" ha ha.

Like you said, its actions that matter. If you look at that, essentially the elected progressives in this country trend towards 0.

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

#390

Post by lostapathy »

jjav wrote: post #383
giraffe_lady wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cites are not fungible, I hate that this always comes up. I have relationships here going back to my childhood, I sometimes visit the grave of the person I am named for, I spend every sunday afternoon cooking and eating with the 97-year-old who took me in and nursed me back to health decades ago. If I move to another city these things aren't coming with. Now you can dismiss these things as inherently less meaningful…

> If I move to another city these things aren't coming with. This is the reason for things like California Prop 13. It gives a benefit to long-time locals to continue living in the same place. Which on the whole seems like a good thing. People can set down roots and become "locals" instead of having a city of ever-changing population who then don't really care so much about the area because they are transient and wil…

People who are born and grown up in an area but can't stay as adults are also "locals" that are hurt by prop 13.
Post reply on HN