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How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

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

#671

Post by staticman2 »

lelanthran wrote: post #669
staticman2 wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Your take is naive. Oh really? What is my "take"? > 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. Yeah, but that's not under discussion. The point I made was that because evictions are so expensive (wiping out years of profit) and long for landlords, they are only ever a l…

The poster upthread called registeredcorn questioned why we have any tenant protection laws at all.

I guess you wrote something intended to have nothing to do with that. While I see that wasn't your intent in context I read you as saying tenant protections don't matter.

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

#672

Post by deepakhj »

tshaddox wrote: post #188
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.

> 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…

US housing inventory is 860k which is at historic lows compared to 1.5m pre-pandemic. It's a housing supply issue. Salt Lake City and Missoula are up 45% YOY with inventories down 40-50%.

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

#673

Post by deepakhj »

adam_arthur wrote: post #310
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.

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.

US housing inventory just hit historic lows of 860k. It was 1.5m pre-pandemic. https://twitter.com/LoganMohtashami/status/15031205369098035...

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

#674

Post by deepakhj »

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…

Do people put roots down and become locals in the other 49 states?

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

#675

Post by imtringued »

slavik81 wrote: post #509
jjav wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In areas where home prices are high, the vast majority of homes have people living in them. When the very rich park wealth in real estate, it is precisely in the ares where prices are highest. Not much point in parking wealth in a cheap house in the midwest. https://nypost.com/2021/08/05/nearly-half-of-luxury-units-em...

If the rich are parking their wealth in real estate, you can take their wealth via property taxes. Many of the places with this problem choose to have low taxes on real estate, which is part of what makes it such a good investment and drives the price up.

Yes, real estate is a tax haven in many locations.

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

#676

Post by imtringued »

sonofhans wrote: post #405
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…

I love your comment, and this way of thinking. > A necessity of life has become a competitive investment vehicle, and the people most hurt by this are told that it is good and correct and they should accept it by wildly upending their lives for no personal benefit. I agree also with your other comments that this view is fundamentally inhuman. So many people in this thread are responding with, “Don’t like it? Move!” T…

If I had to describe the migratory patterbs of half of humanity I would describe it as "they are following tge money".

When african nations import manufactured products from europe that money leaves the local community. This means african countries must export their resources to the countries they are selling to.

Alternatively they can move to europe to work there so they can manufacture products to export to africa. Except in europe they will get insulted that they are economic refugees and should get lost. As if europeans ren't running an economy that benefits from this arrangement.

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

#677

Post by adam_arthur »

deepakhj wrote: post #673
adam_arthur wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

US housing inventory just hit historic lows of 860k. It was 1.5m pre-pandemic. https://twitter.com/LoganMohtashami/status/15031205369098035...

This inventory metric is simply active listings. It has nothing to do with structural housing supply. It also doesn't include houses that are listed and sold within the same month

If 1m people decided to sell tomorrow, suddenly inventory would be normal. At the end of the day what matters is how many housing units are there and how many households. To say there's a shortage is simply wrong, given that the ratio is well in line with historical norms.

The number of active listings is low because a surge of demand due to low interest rates and then later FOMO ate through active inventory. If rates hit 5% within the month, you'll be surprised how quickly inventory returns to normal.

Way too much statistics crimes when talking about housing

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

#678

Post by deepakhj »

adam_arthur wrote: post #677
deepakhj wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US housing inventory just hit historic lows of 860k. It was 1.5m pre-pandemic. https://twitter.com/LoganMohtashami/status/15031205369098035...

This inventory metric is simply active listings. It has nothing to do with structural housing supply. It also doesn't include houses that are listed and sold within the same month If 1m people decided to sell tomorrow, suddenly inventory would be normal. At the end of the day what matters is how many housing units are there and how many households. To say there's a shortage is simply wrong, given that the ratio is we…

Ok, I'll revisit this thread when rates are 5% and inventory jumps back to 1.5m.

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

#679

Post by adam_arthur »

deepakhj wrote: post #678
adam_arthur wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This inventory metric is simply active listings. It has nothing to do with structural housing supply. It also doesn't include houses that are listed and sold within the same month If 1m people decided to sell tomorrow, suddenly inventory would be normal. At the end of the day what matters is how many housing units are there and how many households. To say there's a shortage is simply wrong, given that the ratio is we…

Ok, I'll revisit this thread when rates are 5% and inventory jumps back to 1.5m.

Great! Should only be a few months.

I use logic and accurate interpretation of the data in my assessment, all these counter arguments use statistic butchering and hopium. Yet people cling to the narrative for whatever reason. Bias is a hell of a drug.

If inflation persists at 4-5% we will see 6% mortgages within the year. Many are blinded by the last decade of low inflation. If inflation suddenly dissipates, due to a shock etc, then housing prices can preserve at these levels.

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

#680

Post by epistasis »

nitrogen wrote: post #670
epistasis wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do landlords have the power to raise rents 10% per year? Because there's not enough housing being built. Every unbuilt unit leads to displacement and rising prices. When you say "This results in a transient population," I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "this" but perhaps it's renting at all? If so, the only reason renting leads to "transient" population is the rising rents and displacement caused by lack of…

There is no lack of building. There's an insane amount of single-family and multi-family construction going on where I live, far in excess of natural population growth. But corporate landlords are buying up entire neighborhoods and replacing for-sale signs with for-rent signs. Corporate landlords will squeeze every penny of rent increase they can out of existing tenants, because moving is hard and they've blocked all…

Corporate landlords, or really any landlord for that matter, can't squeeze anybody if they have other options. And in my personal experience, mom and pop landlords are just as greedy as corporate ones, but are less rational and obey the law less frequently.

> There is no lack of building

Putting something in italics doesn't make it true. In the vast majority of high demand areas, there's a smal smattering of new construction, far far less than comes close to meeting population demand, and locals freak out about the construction and vastly overestimate the amount. If your particular location is building 3%-5% more units per year, great, but most of the country is not and that means that every other place that's under building is displacing it's residents to where you live, easily swamping whatever you call "more than natural population growth"

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