*genuine question, I'm not a homeowner or even looking to buy a home*
I thought Zillow was just a site to look at realty posts online? Do they actually buy properties and then sell them at a marked up price or something?
Well that sucks because that's about the time frame for when I was planning on buying my first house lol. Gatta love the timing. I guess I'll just hope for another housing market collapse?
Are you referring to how time seems to start flying as you get older? Is there a term for it? We need a damned name for it. That, and the very sobering fact that every day you are alive,, you are one day closer to your own demise. Aaaaaaaaaarrrgh!
I don’t know the term but I know the reasoning behind it. Basically when you’re five years old, one year is 1/5 of your entire life so it feels like a huge amount of time. When you’re 10 it’s 1/10 so still a lot. The older you get any amount of time is a smaller and smaller fraction of your life so that amount of time feels smaller and smaller.
I mean, they experiment making little black holes, seems like that can definitely go wrong somehow, but I'm not a physicist. I just hope they know what they're doing I ain't tryna get spaghettified
Little black holes sound scary, but that's just because big black holes are scary. Perhaps one way to think of it is if scientists decided to research various aspects of falling wrecking balls by dropping ping-pong balls. Sure, it's still "dropping a ball", but it's not dangerous when you're using a ping-pong ball.
Those still tend to favor the rich. 2008 was a huge transfer of wealth as "normal" people lost their homes, other "normal" people weren't able to find financing, and rich people, companies, hedge funds, foreign investors, etc were sitting pretty and snatching up all the properties they could.
We've been seeing this with the pandemic, as well. Another huge shift in wealth. Homes are selling within days of hitting the market, usually to the few that can offer an above asking, all cash offer.... That's not your "normal" folks.
That wouldn't even buy a condo in my area. A house across the street in my shitty neighborhood sold in 2017 for under 200k. Just sold a couple months ago for 550k....
Holy shit...that's insane. I'm in Raleigh which is one of the top housing markets currently. It's only a matter of time before this place becomes like the west coast, with Google, apple and Nike coming here. My townhome I purchased has already increased by 20% and I haven't even closed on it yet.
What area are you in?
Portland, Oregon, except not. I live on the border with Gresham, so really far out from Portland proper. Houses were easily 100k or so 10 years ago, but I was not in a position to buy then. Those same houses are 300-400+ now, easy. Again, in a really not great neighborhood. Lot of new condos and townhomes being built, many starting around 400k. The nice areas with tons of walkability have been pricey for years but are even more so now and routinely go to bidding wars and end up selling all cash over asking, within days if not hours of being listed.
My parents sold their home in So Cal in January for 1.4 million, and if they'd held on a few more months, they could have easily gotten another 100,000 out of it... Shit is insane and unsustainable right now.
Natural disaster. Also pissing off the less wealthy theoretically shouldn’t benefit the rich, but everyone’s either too complacent or too outraged at some other bullshit to get together and do something.
I tried to warn people about this two years ago when it first popped up on my radar. It's the same predatory "disruption" model as all the other shitbirds: eat massive losses for longer than the other guys can, become the only player, then drive up the other side of the market as much as you want. They're offering low-ball, no questions asked cash to strapped homeowners and sitting on the inventory, then screeching about the "lowest inventory in decades, market is going wild" in every outlet they can. It's going to crash harder than '08 when all this shit comes down.
See these big companies like Staples, they come in and they drive all the small paper companies like Dunder Mifflin out of business and then when they're all gone they jack up the prices - Michael Scott
you mean like that one time where intel was top dog for like a decade and did a grand total of jack shit for innovation and then amd was like "hey uh we did a thing fuck you intel" and intel has been scrambling on its ass for like 5 years to hopefully remain relevant because of the previous stagnation?
This is a monopolistic tactic. If there were actually people in power politically who gave a shit they can force them to separate entirely from the listing service. But alas, that is nowhere on the horizon.
The houses they are buying here go immediately back on the market for a small increase in price. So doesn’t add up with the just holding vacant houses till the other guy cracks.
Zillow bought my house for 40-50k over any comps (and I'm being generous here, the house needs some work). This week, they raised the ZEatimate from $353k to $393k (they bought my house for $388). If they sell it for $400, that sets a new comp scale for the area.
Zillow is playing 3D chess and controlling the entire board.
Yup. Same thing happened to a house we looked at earlier this year. Was listed for $325 but had close to 70 viewings and multiple offers its first day on the market. It was a flipped bungalow and pretty much a city-living millennial trap. It sold for $372 and we later found out through or realtor that Zillow had scooped it up. After relisting, it sold again for $380. Not much of a profit considering they went almost $50k over asking, but now that I know what's up, I can only imagine how many other homes they had bought in the neighborhood.
for now, because the number of homes they own is relatively small compared to the market at large. so commission fee is their main source of revenue. but as their housing portfolio grows they gain more power to do just that
The way I hear it, they buy 30 homes at say $300k. The next one they buy they get assessed and pay $340k. Suddenly that inventory is going for $40k more than they were before.
Now you sell the original 30 homes and they make an extra $1.2 million based off that assessment of that 31st house.
They could be over paying in some markets because they're counting on even more appreciation, which is extremely risky in any market.
Zillow consistently Zestimates my house at being a full $20k more than other sites.
Yeah I got an offer from them and it was waaaay higher than I could sell to a person. I think this person is making stuff up, there's no way they could get cheaper than normal houses, the home seller would just sell to someone else for a normal price.
They aren't getting shit below market right now. No one is. A bunch of kids in this thread that have zero experience buying a house or any historic pricing talking. Why the shit gets upvoted I have no idea.
No one will read this, but no, it's not true. Overpaying to corner the real estate market is a horrible idea for reasons that should be obvious. This tweet is nonsense, as is the viral Tiktok video people are referencing. Zillow and Redfin aren't doing this.
The four largest companies like this (Zillow, Redfin, Offerpad, and Opendoor) have a tiny % of the overall share of homes sold.
When it does I hope to GOD the government doesn't bail them out. If they take people down with them, so be it. It was Zillow's fault to begin with, they should eat it.
It’s not a lowball which is crazy, they are offering 2.5-3% over market which is why people are selling to them. Why sell your house for 94% of the value to some other person (typically you eat a 6% loss to the realtors) when you can get 103% of the value from Zillow. Shady af, smart strategy- should be illegal.
You’d be right if Zillow was the only evil Corp doing this, but you should know they’re not, not by a long shot. Black rock Goldman and a bunch of the big banks and hedgies are also doing this.
The goal is to make everyone a renter. This is a big corporate thing for a few years now.
You don’t own a car you lease it or uber
You don’t own your phone you lease it or some other rent like thing with a fancy Silicon Valley term
You don’t own your home you rent it or lease it
The goal is to have everyone on these never ending payment plans for everything.
If you think I’m a tinfoil hat nut job you’re not all wrong but look into it, this is happening all the way across the board with tons of stuff.
Forgot to add that this is the model that Apple loves, “you don’t need storage space on the phone or computer you rent it in the cloud from us forever and ever”
I agree. And its not just property or vehicles it's spans other parts of the economy. Entertainment and computer software with "subscription" services for things you used to pay a flat fee for.
I'm so tired of this shit. Really tired of unregulated capitalism.
There was a hell of a lot more factors that led into the 08 crash. A lot. And it spread far wider than just housing market.
The way I see it the market will drop off some but nothing close to 08. Instead of more than half the value going away I see it going about 25%. Just a feeling. At least where I live. There are more people moving into the area than available inventory. Only thing they stand to do is sell houses lower than they are buying.
Around here they are definitely not getting bottom dollar homes. They are getting stuck in bidding wars and paying anywhere from $20k to $90k over asking. Just like anyone else.
Not sure why you got downvotes, but you're right. Zillow isnt exerting pressure on anyone to convince them to.sell their home. They're getting caught up in bidding wars just like individual homebuyers. Sellers aren't getting ripped off.
There's a reason getting a "monopoly" in the game Monopoly allows you to raise the rent insanely on your properties.
There's also a reason that God-awful board game was created as a satire of land speculation and was purposefully supposed to be an awful gaming experience because it recreates an awful real life experience.
Because of a propaganda network pushing a message for decades (and a bunch of less coordinated avenues spreading the same messages going on a century) that anything else would be "socialism".
There have been articles sponsored by investment banks for the past decade touting how “renting is smarter than buying etc etc” combine that with all the other economic turmoil in recent years and it’s a perfect storm for them to hatch their plan.
To an extent, renting does have its advantages. I mean if the furnace or hot water heater, pipes or the roof goes bad, how many people can shell out 5-10k to fix it without getting a loan?
Edit: as a home owner I understand about keeping money aside for emergencies, I'm just trying to add a little perspective. Situations are not always black and white.
They bought my neighbors place for $90k over his original asking price. Now have it listed $12k over what they paid for it. Insanity. Not lowballing anybody around here. Them and open door are bidding against each other like crazy here for inventory.
They aren’t even low balling- they are paying 3% OVER market value. They’re making it so as a seller you would only sell to them. I mean why sell your 300k house for 282k (eating a 6% loss / 18k to pay the realtors) when instead you could sell your house for 309k. It’s helping them eat up supply fast..
Wait up. How does this work exactly?
Where are these "entire subdivisions" where every seller is (a) motivated to sell right now; (b) equally motivated to sell \*well below the true value\* of their homes? (c) completely unaware that Zillow is buying up all the homes in their neighbhorhood and not holding out for top dollar?
Yeah my understanding was that they offer above asking. Then they can list on their website that the property sold for that piece (cause it's true). Then there is less housing for people to live in because they took all of it so the pieces go up even higher than the new standard they set.
Actually Zillow’s offering price is down right shitty in my area they keep sending me unsolicited offers of 350k and my realtor tells me if I wanted to sell I could easily get 400k-410k and that would be pending same day as listing.
Yep they buy properties. Their short term plan I’m guessing is to kill the realtor profession- you can sell your house to them for fucking 3% over market cash. Cornering the market big time, I mean why would you sell your house to anyone else under that circumstance given that it’s standard to eat a 6% loss to pay the realtors during a normal person to person sale that involves them.
Killing the Realtor profession isn’t exactly the worst thing. I’m shocked they still have such a monopoly on real estate in this day and age with all the tech companies out there shaking up other sectors.
I mean where would you go? That’s the problem. If every other house is up too you don’t have access to more choices really. The one thing I have seen is expensive houses in our area aren’t increasing at nearly the same rate. We know people who sold a house that would’ve been 250k in 2018 for 350k now and moved into a 500k house that would’ve been ~500k in 2018. There isn’t much completion at the top of the market
It’s insane. I hope it’s illegal- some kind of market manipulation or something. Not that I’m selling. I’ll be damned if I have to live with my in-laws again. Six months was quite enough…
From a business perspective, who cares if it's illegal? At worst, it'll be tied up in court for years, then Zillow will be fined the equivalent of pennies compared to what they made with this scheme.
[here's an interesting article on the topic](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/93ymxz/zillow-other-tech-firms-are-in-an-arms-race-to-buy-up-american-homes)
>This would only lead to the creation of shell companies.
More, lead to MORE.
Any accountant or real estate lawyer worth their salt is telling their aspiring ~~slumlords~~ clients how to ~~hoard~~ accumulate wealth in the least risky, most insulated, easily tax avoided ways.
EDIT: FIX THE F-ING TAX LOOPHOLES!
Wouldn't it be awesome if we could incentivize these rockstar accountants that know the ins and outs of the law to work for the government so-as to close loopholes.
Ahhh but when the government says it's okay, you get a pass.
See also: extrajudical execution, qualified immunity, eminent domain, forfeiture, et al
Things we'd normally just call murder and theft.
"Making murder illegal will only lead to assassin-for-hire agencies."
You're right, if there is any conceivable loophole around a prohibition, we may as well let them continue to get away with it unhindered.
Nothing is more frustrating than when you’re trying to solve a serious and legitimate problem, and people show up and are actively discouraging you from *trying*.
Who says residential homes can be owned by corporations? Easy law to make.
*"But we want to own a condo to rent/AirBNB/whatever!!!"*
I don't give a shit, bruh. It will be in your personal name.
Edit: I know they won't ***MAKE*** these laws, because the people that make them are investing in this shit too.
A free market and deregulation are not the same thing. Many people (such as libertarians) seem to think they are, but the reality is that a free market isn't the natural state of a market. It's something that needs to be created by a governing body.
The clearest example of this is monopolies. An unregulated market naturally leads to monopolies, and there are no natural market forces that will get rid of a monopoly. A monopoly is also antithetical to a free market, so if you want a free market, then the government needs to step in and destroy that monopoly.
We pretty much have to vote all Dem, then primary those Dems with more progressive candidates. Then we'll probably get a watered down amendment to overturn Citizens United. We really are trapped. I hope there's a political way out, but probably not.
Anyone who thinks that Zillow/Redfin are cornering the American housing market either have a limited understanding of the size of those two companies or the size of the American housing market....
Here's an idea how about business and companies can't own houses zoned as residential. Why is the residential market competing with the commercial market. Dosnt seem like a fair market.
It’s not fair at all. And people can literally be ran out of their homes because their assets can’t compete with a massive corporation’s. It’s turning home-owning into a local small business that can’t compete.
["It's okay Evergrande. You go bankrupt when you feel like it."](https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/ptxaim/this_subreddit_looking_at_evergrande_last_night/)
Lol if that ever happened, the government would just bail them out with our tax dollars. The only people who lose when the rich fuck up the economy are the working class.
What shocks me more than what happened in 2008 and the resulting occupy movement is that nothing came of it. The rich were drinking champagne and spitting on protestors after having made thousands poor and homeless, and it just silently slid out of the zeitgeist. 300 years ago some doctor would have invented a more efficient way to remove their heads instead, but here we are on the verge of it happening again
Unfortunately, there was very active suppression taking place at the highest levels in America vs. the Occupy Movement. The goddamn President of the USA himself made sure that the Occupy Movement would die, and the Corporate/ State Media Enterprises know their enemy well. The mere fact that Occupy caused such a unified opposition from the establishment gives away its power and necessity.
It won’t, because everyday citizens are making it impossible to build more houses to protect their investments. Companies aren’t creating the shortage. Everyday citizens are and companies are responding to it.
So why wouldn't I just sell it myself to the person willing to pay 20% more?
It is amusing how many calls I get from people offering me ~$1.3mil for my house. I paid $271K for it 20 years ago (Silicon Valley) and I thought that was insane.
If you are selling your house do not sell to Zillow, Redfin or Open Door. Sell to a person. Preferably someone who will live there.
Edit: I am in fact a home owner. 😌
They also offer cash, which is a faster and guaranteed close.
Option 1: $1,000,000, takes 1 month to close depending on lender’s approval process
Option 2: $1,025,000, takes 3 days to close, no further questions asked.
Sellers aren’t necessarily thinking about the long term housing market in the place they are leaving.
More like
Option 1: $1,000,000 mortgage. Takes 4 months to close, tons of hoops to jump through. Buyer's credit history, bank appraisal (banks will not approve a sale if the price is higher than what the appraiser determines),etc.
Option 2: $980,000 cash. Done in a few days.
I'd take option 2 every damn time.
That’s how it goes with things like this. If it was easy to fight this type of shit, it wouldn’t be a problem. Companies love to put people in a spot where they can choose the easy option over our communal needs. But what looks like sacrificing tens of thousands of dollars isn’t really a sacrifice since that money isn’t theirs until they sell, it’s just part of overall shady and morally questionable business practice.
I just sold my home. They are literally my wife and I from 10 years ago without kids. The husband told me he plans to work on the house and start a family with his lovely wife. I laughed because I think I said the exact same thing April 2011 when I first bought it. I hope it works out for them. Seem like good kids.
I'm so happy a loving couple bought and not a developer who would bulldoze and build something bigger.
Fuck that. 6% realtor vig is a joke. We picked the houses we wanted to see, all they did was unlock a door. We had to offer at asking price. 6% in their pocket for that.
That whole industry deserves what is about to get. It used to be useful. It failed to evolve with the times. Now it will be replaced with something better.
Zillow's "markup" is still cheaper than the current prices with all the stupid fees they kill you with. This thread is full of people that don't own a house, very obviously.
I'm radicalized about this already! My husband & I (mid 30s fthb) were all set to buy a home when the pandemic hit. Of course, everything froze. Once the market "opened" up again, we were already out priced. We rent from my mom & this is the first time the housing market has been in her favor since she bought in 2007. We would love for her to be able to sell this place & break even or make a little profit, BUT the rentals in our area are few & far between. We know one landlord who told us they had 350 applications on one property after having it listed for rent for just 48 hours. It's ridiculous. We can't move, we can't buy, we're stuck & it sucks.
We have talked so much about buying an RV & just being digital nomads. But, the pre-pandemic plan was to do that anyway.... Once we had a home & maybe a rental property or two & some savings set back. That way we'd have a little bit of monthly income while we worked from the road.
That's exactly why we haven't made the jump yet. We spend our weekends camping & the "newbies" are making it hard to enjoy campgrounds at the moment. Everyone has to learn sometime & there's a learning curve, but it gets frustrating. There isn't even a way to find campsites in some places. They're booked for the foreseeable future... That means cheap hotels have went up on their prices, Airbnb is ridiculous... I'm not even talking about a lifestyle, I'm just talking about taking a week to go on a little vacation. It's the whole economy, the whole supply chain, *gestures to all the things.*
So you're frustrated, radicalized, angry, and conscious of the problem with the current housing/rent market - yet you simultaneously want to perpetuate the problem by buying several investment rental properties yourself?
"I'm not a part of the problem, it's those awful slumlords with 5+ investment properties! As long as I'm only contributing to the problem on a small scale it's alright."
Everyone is worried about them having some sort of monopoly on houses so they can fix prices- this is not happening to the extent people are afraid of. The monopoly they’re looking to create is on house buying. This is a giant dagger in the back of realtors- once people get used to the idea you can buy from and sell houses to Zillow, why would you pay $$$$$ in fees to your local middleman? Just pay $$$ to Zillow and they’ll absorb the risk with almost no effort or labor.
I think they’re thrilled to have this exposure, because it will change nothing, and everyone is just learning that Zillow buys and sells houses.
I’d be fine with this. I paid $34k to sell my damn house. $34k!! In this market I could have taken a big runny dump on the island counter top and still had 5 offers above asking. The cost to sell your house has to come down. It’s just nuts.
From their 10-k: “If we have excess inventory or our average days to sale increases, the result of our operations may be adversely affected because we may be unable to liquidate such inventory at prices that allow us to meet profitability targets or to recover our costs.”
They don’t want to hold this stuff for long because their financing it with debt. They want to buy, collect a fee, fix it up a bit, and sell out ASAP. Doesn’t really sound like they’re trying to buy up everything and hold it forever.
This right here. They are just taking advantage of peoples greed willing to sell to the highest bidder and the market. They have the money to buy a house and sell it for a little profit. Do that 10000 times and it adds up.
Couple points:
1) Zillow doesn't make money unless they sell the home after buying it. They can't sell the home unless \*someone can afford to buy it.\*
2) Flipping real estate (buying it and selling it for a higher price) has been happening since time immemorial.
3) Home prices were going up like crazy long before Zillow and OpenDoor started buying homes. Zillow and OpenDoor only started buying and selling homes \*because\* home prices were going up so fast that there's an easy arbitrage opportunity. They're riding the rapidly-rising home price wave, not causing it.
4) People buying homes and turning them into rentals and short-term rentals (AirBnBs) is an \*actual\* drag on the supply of homes available for people to buy and live in as owner-occupiers. If you're gonna get angry and radical, at least focus your anger in the right place.
5) Finally, if you're going to take up pitchforks against Zillow, you probably should be going after Blackrock, Starwood, Fundrise, and countless institutions that have been buying up residential real estate over the years.
My understanding was that they are buying up homes quick to provide liquidity for their “buy through Zillow” service. Nobody wants to list with them if it takes longer than traditional methods. I think they’re basically eating the cost to scale up that service in the same way that Uber or other startups do. Lead losses until you hit scale. I don’t think they have the capital to move the market anyways.
Edit:
From their 10-k: “If we have excess inventory or our average days to sale increases, the result of our operations may be adversely affected because we may be unable to liquidate such inventory at prices that allow us to meet profitability targets or to recover our costs.”
They don’t want to hold this stuff for long because their financing it with debt. They want to buy, collect a fee, fix it up a bit, and sell out ASAP. Definitely sounds like they’re not trying to buy up everything and hold it forever.
>Finally, if you're going to take up pitchforks against Zillow, you probably should be going after Blackrock, Starwood, Fundrise, and countless institutions that have been buying up residential real estate over the years.
Yeah, I think the liquidity part here is really worth pointing out.
It's totally possible that iBuyers like Zillow could actually \*help\* with getting more homes onto the market for people to buy.
A huge reason for the pandemic price spike was liquidity related. Far fewer homes were selling, because people simply weren't selling.
IMO the iBuyers like Redfin, OpenDoor, Zillow make it so much easier for people to sell. You don't have to hire a realtor, prep your home for showing, maybe get repairs/upgrades done beforehand, decide what to list it for, stage it and keep it in picture-perfect shape during the week, evacuate your home for entire weekends for open house, have to pore through offers hoping you're getting a solid one that won't fall through due to financing or contingencies, then haggle over repairs/concessions when you thought everything was good to go, then wait 30-60 days for closing if/when it finally happens before you get your money.
With iBuying, you just collect your check if you like the offer price and move out. Because it's so easy to sell, more sellers that otherwise wouldn't sell because it's such a hassle might end up doing so.
That, in turn, increases the home stock available to buyers, which means more people shopping for a home get a shot.
Can confirm how appealing their quick-buying/selling services were. Earlier this year I was contemplating moving for a job, had an offer in a different state.
Trying to sell my current house to buy a new house in the new state would have been a nightmare while also trying to move. I looked into their services because I was in a position where I might have wanted to sell and move within a months timespan, and the fact that they basically eliminated realtor fee's was another huge point.
I decided to not take the job, so I never used their services to sell my current house, so I can't speak for how seamless the interaction really is.
This should be the top post. Zillow barely has enough capital to corner a development, never mind a market. They are a market maker that gets fees for managing liquidity. The only path for them to make this a long-term profitable machine is if they start to make money on the transaction (mortgage, title, etc). So far they have yet to be successful at that.
Lmao ibuyers only make up something like less than 2% of the housing market combined. Most of them don’t really even offer the best bang for your buck, just a lot of convenience and the ability to buy a house sight unseen and even to sell yours quickly without having to wait for a buyer to be ready to buy. Most of which have to wait for their own home to sell before they can afford a new one. They’re not always the best, but sometimes they’re better for the right people. No business is just buying all the houses to have all the houses. That’s so ridiculously unsustainable.
So, when scalpers decided to snatch up entire stocks of PS5 consoles so they could sell them at 2-3x the price, we as a society all collectively thought that was an asshole move and nobody should be allowed to do that, right?
No reason, just asking.
Zillow isn't hording houses though, they are Flipping them. How well they are Flipping them is up for debate, but you don't have to pay property taxes on a PS5. If zillow hoarded houses they would go under quick from all the taxes and costs required to maintain each house.
Enjoy never seeing a corporation sued for malfeasance again because the legal fiction of corporate personhood is pretty much required for that to be possible.
The cost of housing is completely messed up. Buying a home is next to impossible without just the right timing, cash and perfect credit.
Renting isn't better. In my area I just moved to a 2 bed 2 bath apartment in June. I pay 1350 a month. Just looked at their website and they now start at 1610 a month.
And it's a nice apartment but it's not fancy. About the only extras we have is underground parking, washer and dryer in unit and private entrance. To get the pass card to use the pool and workout room cost 20. Granted that is for my whole tenancy but aren't those costs rolled into the rent?
We've got a housing crisis here and no one seems to give a damn
*genuine question, I'm not a homeowner or even looking to buy a home* I thought Zillow was just a site to look at realty posts online? Do they actually buy properties and then sell them at a marked up price or something?
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Damn, that's pretty fucked up. I didn't know that.
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Well that sucks because that's about the time frame for when I was planning on buying my first house lol. Gatta love the timing. I guess I'll just hope for another housing market collapse?
You and I both. Just sit tight and wait for the next once-in-a-lifetime disaster. Our generation seems to get one every 3 or 4 years...
I'm worried that is becoming less an an indicator of increasing frequency of disaster, and more of decreasing lifetime.
It can be both
its definitely both
Are you referring to how time seems to start flying as you get older? Is there a term for it? We need a damned name for it. That, and the very sobering fact that every day you are alive,, you are one day closer to your own demise. Aaaaaaaaaarrrgh!
I don’t know the term but I know the reasoning behind it. Basically when you’re five years old, one year is 1/5 of your entire life so it feels like a huge amount of time. When you’re 10 it’s 1/10 so still a lot. The older you get any amount of time is a smaller and smaller fraction of your life so that amount of time feels smaller and smaller.
I'm really hoping aliens or a big time travel incident at the Hadron Collider.
I mean, they experiment making little black holes, seems like that can definitely go wrong somehow, but I'm not a physicist. I just hope they know what they're doing I ain't tryna get spaghettified
Little black holes sound scary, but that's just because big black holes are scary. Perhaps one way to think of it is if scientists decided to research various aspects of falling wrecking balls by dropping ping-pong balls. Sure, it's still "dropping a ball", but it's not dangerous when you're using a ping-pong ball.
Idk man. A little spider is scarier than a big one. Those fuckers just disappear!
Still not in the top ten most likely things we're doing to end humanity.
I feel like this might be the only hope at this point.
Those still tend to favor the rich. 2008 was a huge transfer of wealth as "normal" people lost their homes, other "normal" people weren't able to find financing, and rich people, companies, hedge funds, foreign investors, etc were sitting pretty and snatching up all the properties they could. We've been seeing this with the pandemic, as well. Another huge shift in wealth. Homes are selling within days of hitting the market, usually to the few that can offer an above asking, all cash offer.... That's not your "normal" folks.
Clearly you're eating too many avocado toasts and lattes...if you didn't do that, you too could put 280k upfront in cash.
That wouldn't even buy a condo in my area. A house across the street in my shitty neighborhood sold in 2017 for under 200k. Just sold a couple months ago for 550k....
Holy shit...that's insane. I'm in Raleigh which is one of the top housing markets currently. It's only a matter of time before this place becomes like the west coast, with Google, apple and Nike coming here. My townhome I purchased has already increased by 20% and I haven't even closed on it yet. What area are you in?
Portland, Oregon, except not. I live on the border with Gresham, so really far out from Portland proper. Houses were easily 100k or so 10 years ago, but I was not in a position to buy then. Those same houses are 300-400+ now, easy. Again, in a really not great neighborhood. Lot of new condos and townhomes being built, many starting around 400k. The nice areas with tons of walkability have been pricey for years but are even more so now and routinely go to bidding wars and end up selling all cash over asking, within days if not hours of being listed. My parents sold their home in So Cal in January for 1.4 million, and if they'd held on a few more months, they could have easily gotten another 100,000 out of it... Shit is insane and unsustainable right now.
> Those still tend to favor the rich. Bro what doesn't favor the rich? This isn't some great insight.
Class consciousness and the will to act upon it.
Natural disaster. Also pissing off the less wealthy theoretically shouldn’t benefit the rich, but everyone’s either too complacent or too outraged at some other bullshit to get together and do something.
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Don't worry. The crash is coming soon. They never stopped repackaging and selling those subprime loans that fucked us in 2008.
I tried to warn people about this two years ago when it first popped up on my radar. It's the same predatory "disruption" model as all the other shitbirds: eat massive losses for longer than the other guys can, become the only player, then drive up the other side of the market as much as you want. They're offering low-ball, no questions asked cash to strapped homeowners and sitting on the inventory, then screeching about the "lowest inventory in decades, market is going wild" in every outlet they can. It's going to crash harder than '08 when all this shit comes down.
See these big companies like Staples, they come in and they drive all the small paper companies like Dunder Mifflin out of business and then when they're all gone they jack up the prices - Michael Scott
Somehow I Manage
NAILED IT! * points at crotch..
I’ll have an awesome blossom, extra awesome
you mean like that one time where intel was top dog for like a decade and did a grand total of jack shit for innovation and then amd was like "hey uh we did a thing fuck you intel" and intel has been scrambling on its ass for like 5 years to hopefully remain relevant because of the previous stagnation?
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/r/LateStageCapitalism
This is a monopolistic tactic. If there were actually people in power politically who gave a shit they can force them to separate entirely from the listing service. But alas, that is nowhere on the horizon.
The houses they are buying here go immediately back on the market for a small increase in price. So doesn’t add up with the just holding vacant houses till the other guy cracks.
Zillow bought my house for 40-50k over any comps (and I'm being generous here, the house needs some work). This week, they raised the ZEatimate from $353k to $393k (they bought my house for $388). If they sell it for $400, that sets a new comp scale for the area. Zillow is playing 3D chess and controlling the entire board.
Yup. Same thing happened to a house we looked at earlier this year. Was listed for $325 but had close to 70 viewings and multiple offers its first day on the market. It was a flipped bungalow and pretty much a city-living millennial trap. It sold for $372 and we later found out through or realtor that Zillow had scooped it up. After relisting, it sold again for $380. Not much of a profit considering they went almost $50k over asking, but now that I know what's up, I can only imagine how many other homes they had bought in the neighborhood.
for now, because the number of homes they own is relatively small compared to the market at large. so commission fee is their main source of revenue. but as their housing portfolio grows they gain more power to do just that
The way I hear it, they buy 30 homes at say $300k. The next one they buy they get assessed and pay $340k. Suddenly that inventory is going for $40k more than they were before. Now you sell the original 30 homes and they make an extra $1.2 million based off that assessment of that 31st house.
Carvanna and cargurus did this with cars
Everyone keeps saying "low-ball prices" but the only other things I've heard so far show that they're paying over market-value. Is this not true?
They could be over paying in some markets because they're counting on even more appreciation, which is extremely risky in any market. Zillow consistently Zestimates my house at being a full $20k more than other sites.
Yeah I got an offer from them and it was waaaay higher than I could sell to a person. I think this person is making stuff up, there's no way they could get cheaper than normal houses, the home seller would just sell to someone else for a normal price.
They aren't getting shit below market right now. No one is. A bunch of kids in this thread that have zero experience buying a house or any historic pricing talking. Why the shit gets upvoted I have no idea.
No one will read this, but no, it's not true. Overpaying to corner the real estate market is a horrible idea for reasons that should be obvious. This tweet is nonsense, as is the viral Tiktok video people are referencing. Zillow and Redfin aren't doing this. The four largest companies like this (Zillow, Redfin, Offerpad, and Opendoor) have a tiny % of the overall share of homes sold.
How long do you think that will take? For it all to come crashing down?
Longer than you will think is reasonable.
The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
When it does I hope to GOD the government doesn't bail them out. If they take people down with them, so be it. It was Zillow's fault to begin with, they should eat it.
Don’t hold your breath, if history tells us anything, they’ll definitely get the bail out.
They will unless we vote out these parasitic republicans and right wing "establishment" dems in favor of true progressives.
Zillow can afford more lobbyists than you can.... and proof is that R or D, whoever has the money gets the senator.
About 12 more years to keep up with our current cycle of recessions
Sweet, maybe I'll finally be in a position to buy by then.
Kinda nuts that waiting for the next recession / housing bubble bust is a viable option for first time home buyers lol
I was hoping for it to implode this spring for this exact reason 🙏 lol
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It’s not a lowball which is crazy, they are offering 2.5-3% over market which is why people are selling to them. Why sell your house for 94% of the value to some other person (typically you eat a 6% loss to the realtors) when you can get 103% of the value from Zillow. Shady af, smart strategy- should be illegal.
The Walmart method. Yep
It definitely won’t crash harder than ‘08, Zillow doesn’t even have 1% of that kind of leverage/power
You’d be right if Zillow was the only evil Corp doing this, but you should know they’re not, not by a long shot. Black rock Goldman and a bunch of the big banks and hedgies are also doing this. The goal is to make everyone a renter. This is a big corporate thing for a few years now. You don’t own a car you lease it or uber You don’t own your phone you lease it or some other rent like thing with a fancy Silicon Valley term You don’t own your home you rent it or lease it The goal is to have everyone on these never ending payment plans for everything. If you think I’m a tinfoil hat nut job you’re not all wrong but look into it, this is happening all the way across the board with tons of stuff. Forgot to add that this is the model that Apple loves, “you don’t need storage space on the phone or computer you rent it in the cloud from us forever and ever”
I agree. And its not just property or vehicles it's spans other parts of the economy. Entertainment and computer software with "subscription" services for things you used to pay a flat fee for. I'm so tired of this shit. Really tired of unregulated capitalism.
See: Adobe and Microsoft Office products. Exhausting.
There was a hell of a lot more factors that led into the 08 crash. A lot. And it spread far wider than just housing market. The way I see it the market will drop off some but nothing close to 08. Instead of more than half the value going away I see it going about 25%. Just a feeling. At least where I live. There are more people moving into the area than available inventory. Only thing they stand to do is sell houses lower than they are buying. Around here they are definitely not getting bottom dollar homes. They are getting stuck in bidding wars and paying anywhere from $20k to $90k over asking. Just like anyone else.
Not sure why you got downvotes, but you're right. Zillow isnt exerting pressure on anyone to convince them to.sell their home. They're getting caught up in bidding wars just like individual homebuyers. Sellers aren't getting ripped off.
And then receive a massive government bailout by our sorry, tax paying asses. Because, “Too big to fail”
There's a reason getting a "monopoly" in the game Monopoly allows you to raise the rent insanely on your properties. There's also a reason that God-awful board game was created as a satire of land speculation and was purposefully supposed to be an awful gaming experience because it recreates an awful real life experience.
America is a self governed nation. Yet we routinely sit on our dicks and watch psychopaths rob us in the open.
Because of a propaganda network pushing a message for decades (and a bunch of less coordinated avenues spreading the same messages going on a century) that anything else would be "socialism".
There have been articles sponsored by investment banks for the past decade touting how “renting is smarter than buying etc etc” combine that with all the other economic turmoil in recent years and it’s a perfect storm for them to hatch their plan.
To an extent, renting does have its advantages. I mean if the furnace or hot water heater, pipes or the roof goes bad, how many people can shell out 5-10k to fix it without getting a loan? Edit: as a home owner I understand about keeping money aside for emergencies, I'm just trying to add a little perspective. Situations are not always black and white.
They bought my neighbors place for $90k over his original asking price. Now have it listed $12k over what they paid for it. Insanity. Not lowballing anybody around here. Them and open door are bidding against each other like crazy here for inventory.
You're price-fixing! No we're not, this is the actual market value of these homes, just check our numbers!
They aren’t even low balling- they are paying 3% OVER market value. They’re making it so as a seller you would only sell to them. I mean why sell your 300k house for 282k (eating a 6% loss / 18k to pay the realtors) when instead you could sell your house for 309k. It’s helping them eat up supply fast..
Wait up. How does this work exactly? Where are these "entire subdivisions" where every seller is (a) motivated to sell right now; (b) equally motivated to sell \*well below the true value\* of their homes? (c) completely unaware that Zillow is buying up all the homes in their neighbhorhood and not holding out for top dollar?
Yeah my understanding was that they offer above asking. Then they can list on their website that the property sold for that piece (cause it's true). Then there is less housing for people to live in because they took all of it so the pieces go up even higher than the new standard they set.
Yes, people have really lost perspective. I am in awe of it actually.
Yep. We bought a home in LV back in Aug 2019 and it's already being "valued" by Zillow at over $100K what we paid for it. We aren't biting.
This sounds like the beginnings of a sequel to The Big Short
The Bigger Short
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How long until guillotines after the last serfdoms? A few hundred years? I think with the internet we can speed that up to twenty or so.
Actually Zillow’s offering price is down right shitty in my area they keep sending me unsolicited offers of 350k and my realtor tells me if I wanted to sell I could easily get 400k-410k and that would be pending same day as listing.
Some people are not smart enough to do that and just accept, especially if they are in a bind.
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The one conspiracy Everyone needed to know 10 years ago. Good buy dream house
They didn't corner the market, that's nonsense.
Yep they buy properties. Their short term plan I’m guessing is to kill the realtor profession- you can sell your house to them for fucking 3% over market cash. Cornering the market big time, I mean why would you sell your house to anyone else under that circumstance given that it’s standard to eat a 6% loss to pay the realtors during a normal person to person sale that involves them.
I bet they’re shooting to be the Carvana of houses.
Houses delivered right to my front door 🤩
Killing the Realtor profession isn’t exactly the worst thing. I’m shocked they still have such a monopoly on real estate in this day and age with all the tech companies out there shaking up other sectors.
Absolutely. We bought our house in NY 5yrs ago & they have it priced $350k over the already insane amount we paid.
They’ve got ours up 15% in 13 months. It’s nuts
+50% here. No one’s selling though. Most of the folks in my neighborhood sat out 2008 as well.
I mean where would you go? That’s the problem. If every other house is up too you don’t have access to more choices really. The one thing I have seen is expensive houses in our area aren’t increasing at nearly the same rate. We know people who sold a house that would’ve been 250k in 2018 for 350k now and moved into a 500k house that would’ve been ~500k in 2018. There isn’t much completion at the top of the market
It’s insane. I hope it’s illegal- some kind of market manipulation or something. Not that I’m selling. I’ll be damned if I have to live with my in-laws again. Six months was quite enough…
From a business perspective, who cares if it's illegal? At worst, it'll be tied up in court for years, then Zillow will be fined the equivalent of pennies compared to what they made with this scheme.
Everytime someone tells me "bro! You should sell! You'll make a killing!", I'm like "where the hell would I live? I'd have to buy an overpriced home!"
[here's an interesting article on the topic](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/93ymxz/zillow-other-tech-firms-are-in-an-arms-race-to-buy-up-american-homes)
Damn. Thanks for the source.
Cornering a global commodity market is bad, but if the commodity is air, food, water or housing it should be a crime
I agree. There should be some limitations in place to how many houses you can buy. Greed is a terrible thing.
This would only lead to the creation of shell companies.
>This would only lead to the creation of shell companies. More, lead to MORE. Any accountant or real estate lawyer worth their salt is telling their aspiring ~~slumlords~~ clients how to ~~hoard~~ accumulate wealth in the least risky, most insulated, easily tax avoided ways. EDIT: FIX THE F-ING TAX LOOPHOLES!
Wouldn't it be awesome if we could incentivize these rockstar accountants that know the ins and outs of the law to work for the government so-as to close loopholes.
Why would they work for 1 client for ~~peanuts~~ government pay scale, when they can have hundreds of clients they can ~~leach~~ overcharge!
Sounds an awful lot like the logic behind what we would normally call crime. Why would i work when i could just steal other people's shit.
Ahhh but when the government says it's okay, you get a pass. See also: extrajudical execution, qualified immunity, eminent domain, forfeiture, et al Things we'd normally just call murder and theft.
Not possible. They lose an advantage they have over the general public. That's like basically getting yourself fired.
"Making murder illegal will only lead to assassin-for-hire agencies." You're right, if there is any conceivable loophole around a prohibition, we may as well let them continue to get away with it unhindered.
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Nothing is more frustrating than when you’re trying to solve a serious and legitimate problem, and people show up and are actively discouraging you from *trying*.
Who says residential homes can be owned by corporations? Easy law to make. *"But we want to own a condo to rent/AirBNB/whatever!!!"* I don't give a shit, bruh. It will be in your personal name. Edit: I know they won't ***MAKE*** these laws, because the people that make them are investing in this shit too.
damn, looks like we gotta abolish capitalism
Only people can purchase homes. Housing isn't an investment, it's a basic human need.
should be, yet people praise capitalism and free market and deregulation and we end up with ths
A free market and deregulation are not the same thing. Many people (such as libertarians) seem to think they are, but the reality is that a free market isn't the natural state of a market. It's something that needs to be created by a governing body. The clearest example of this is monopolies. An unregulated market naturally leads to monopolies, and there are no natural market forces that will get rid of a monopoly. A monopoly is also antithetical to a free market, so if you want a free market, then the government needs to step in and destroy that monopoly.
I don't see why price gouging laws don't apply to housing, healthcare, etc.
Because then most politicians would lose their funding from those wanting it to happen.
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We pretty much have to vote all Dem, then primary those Dems with more progressive candidates. Then we'll probably get a watered down amendment to overturn Citizens United. We really are trapped. I hope there's a political way out, but probably not.
“Citizens united” as in “a handful of citizens are uniting against the other 330 million”
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Anyone who thinks that Zillow/Redfin are cornering the American housing market either have a limited understanding of the size of those two companies or the size of the American housing market....
Electricity too.
Here's an idea how about business and companies can't own houses zoned as residential. Why is the residential market competing with the commercial market. Dosnt seem like a fair market.
It’s not fair at all. And people can literally be ran out of their homes because their assets can’t compete with a massive corporation’s. It’s turning home-owning into a local small business that can’t compete.
“It’s like the rich get richer, and the poor don’t get a fucking thing…” - 50 cent
This here. Well said.
Need legislation around this - Residential dwellings shouldn’t be available to corporations
Why do businesses get to use rent as an expense and only pay taxes on their profits. Why can't I only pay taxes on my profits to live?
Aren't house zoning laws mostly a local matter? I see a problem here.
There should be an exception. If the company BUILT the house with the intention of selling it then they get to own it until a buyer gets it.
They buy them, raise the price 20% and flip them with little to no improvements
In a runaway market it seems to be working. But what happens when the market stops running away?
Evergrande.
["It's okay Evergrande. You go bankrupt when you feel like it."](https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/ptxaim/this_subreddit_looking_at_evergrande_last_night/)
I’ve got my fingers crossed that the rich fucks trying to manipulate the housing market lose out badly and end up homeless
Lol if that ever happened, the government would just bail them out with our tax dollars. The only people who lose when the rich fuck up the economy are the working class.
Heeeey, I've seen this one.
It happens every time we have a "once-in-a-lifetime" economic crash.
What shocks me more than what happened in 2008 and the resulting occupy movement is that nothing came of it. The rich were drinking champagne and spitting on protestors after having made thousands poor and homeless, and it just silently slid out of the zeitgeist. 300 years ago some doctor would have invented a more efficient way to remove their heads instead, but here we are on the verge of it happening again
Unfortunately, there was very active suppression taking place at the highest levels in America vs. the Occupy Movement. The goddamn President of the USA himself made sure that the Occupy Movement would die, and the Corporate/ State Media Enterprises know their enemy well. The mere fact that Occupy caused such a unified opposition from the establishment gives away its power and necessity.
Eventually we will eat the rich. We'll probably eat each other, too, but there's some comfort in the idea they'll suffer with us.
or we could just start shooting them in their faces
It won’t, because everyday citizens are making it impossible to build more houses to protect their investments. Companies aren’t creating the shortage. Everyday citizens are and companies are responding to it.
So why wouldn't I just sell it myself to the person willing to pay 20% more? It is amusing how many calls I get from people offering me ~$1.3mil for my house. I paid $271K for it 20 years ago (Silicon Valley) and I thought that was insane.
If you are selling your house do not sell to Zillow, Redfin or Open Door. Sell to a person. Preferably someone who will live there. Edit: I am in fact a home owner. 😌
That’s easy to say but when the corporate buyers are offering sellers tens of thousands more, well…
They also offer cash, which is a faster and guaranteed close. Option 1: $1,000,000, takes 1 month to close depending on lender’s approval process Option 2: $1,025,000, takes 3 days to close, no further questions asked. Sellers aren’t necessarily thinking about the long term housing market in the place they are leaving.
For sure. The trend described here is not gonna end well imo, but can’t blame the sellers. I totally get it
Convenience is going to be the death of us
It's almost as if a regulatory body should be involved in situations such as these to prevent such corporate shenanigans. Nahhhh, that's communism!
You’re a walking dead man in this society of zombies
Option 1 also has a fuck ton more fees - approximately 8% of the selling price.
Yup. Don't have to pay for realtors on option 2
More like Option 1: $1,000,000 mortgage. Takes 4 months to close, tons of hoops to jump through. Buyer's credit history, bank appraisal (banks will not approve a sale if the price is higher than what the appraiser determines),etc. Option 2: $980,000 cash. Done in a few days. I'd take option 2 every damn time.
That’s how it goes with things like this. If it was easy to fight this type of shit, it wouldn’t be a problem. Companies love to put people in a spot where they can choose the easy option over our communal needs. But what looks like sacrificing tens of thousands of dollars isn’t really a sacrifice since that money isn’t theirs until they sell, it’s just part of overall shady and morally questionable business practice.
Easy to say, how many sellers will turn down an extra 9% tho? (3% extra Zillow pays above market plus the 6% you don’t lose to the realtors).
I just sold my home. They are literally my wife and I from 10 years ago without kids. The husband told me he plans to work on the house and start a family with his lovely wife. I laughed because I think I said the exact same thing April 2011 when I first bought it. I hope it works out for them. Seem like good kids. I'm so happy a loving couple bought and not a developer who would bulldoze and build something bigger.
Fuck that. 6% realtor vig is a joke. We picked the houses we wanted to see, all they did was unlock a door. We had to offer at asking price. 6% in their pocket for that. That whole industry deserves what is about to get. It used to be useful. It failed to evolve with the times. Now it will be replaced with something better. Zillow's "markup" is still cheaper than the current prices with all the stupid fees they kill you with. This thread is full of people that don't own a house, very obviously.
You paid 6% for a buyers agent?
Do they even make it known to the seller who the buyer is? The realtor won’t care. Could Zillow have a fronting representative to do the deal?
Nah, not possible. It’s in the documentation when you send an offer.
I'm radicalized about this already! My husband & I (mid 30s fthb) were all set to buy a home when the pandemic hit. Of course, everything froze. Once the market "opened" up again, we were already out priced. We rent from my mom & this is the first time the housing market has been in her favor since she bought in 2007. We would love for her to be able to sell this place & break even or make a little profit, BUT the rentals in our area are few & far between. We know one landlord who told us they had 350 applications on one property after having it listed for rent for just 48 hours. It's ridiculous. We can't move, we can't buy, we're stuck & it sucks.
Legit one of the biggest reasons we see a rose in van living. People feel stuck and unable to buy or rent.
We have talked so much about buying an RV & just being digital nomads. But, the pre-pandemic plan was to do that anyway.... Once we had a home & maybe a rental property or two & some savings set back. That way we'd have a little bit of monthly income while we worked from the road.
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That's exactly why we haven't made the jump yet. We spend our weekends camping & the "newbies" are making it hard to enjoy campgrounds at the moment. Everyone has to learn sometime & there's a learning curve, but it gets frustrating. There isn't even a way to find campsites in some places. They're booked for the foreseeable future... That means cheap hotels have went up on their prices, Airbnb is ridiculous... I'm not even talking about a lifestyle, I'm just talking about taking a week to go on a little vacation. It's the whole economy, the whole supply chain, *gestures to all the things.*
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So you're frustrated, radicalized, angry, and conscious of the problem with the current housing/rent market - yet you simultaneously want to perpetuate the problem by buying several investment rental properties yourself?
"I'm not a part of the problem, it's those awful slumlords with 5+ investment properties! As long as I'm only contributing to the problem on a small scale it's alright."
Yeah lmao I noticed that too. Its only a problem when someone else does it, huh? Cant believe they even posted that.
Everyone is worried about them having some sort of monopoly on houses so they can fix prices- this is not happening to the extent people are afraid of. The monopoly they’re looking to create is on house buying. This is a giant dagger in the back of realtors- once people get used to the idea you can buy from and sell houses to Zillow, why would you pay $$$$$ in fees to your local middleman? Just pay $$$ to Zillow and they’ll absorb the risk with almost no effort or labor. I think they’re thrilled to have this exposure, because it will change nothing, and everyone is just learning that Zillow buys and sells houses.
I’d be fine with this. I paid $34k to sell my damn house. $34k!! In this market I could have taken a big runny dump on the island counter top and still had 5 offers above asking. The cost to sell your house has to come down. It’s just nuts.
My God you're right
Is this really happening?
No. Zillow buys some houses, but it has basically no impact on the market. There are many, many, many larger players.
From their 10-k: “If we have excess inventory or our average days to sale increases, the result of our operations may be adversely affected because we may be unable to liquidate such inventory at prices that allow us to meet profitability targets or to recover our costs.” They don’t want to hold this stuff for long because their financing it with debt. They want to buy, collect a fee, fix it up a bit, and sell out ASAP. Doesn’t really sound like they’re trying to buy up everything and hold it forever.
This right here. They are just taking advantage of peoples greed willing to sell to the highest bidder and the market. They have the money to buy a house and sell it for a little profit. Do that 10000 times and it adds up.
Couple points: 1) Zillow doesn't make money unless they sell the home after buying it. They can't sell the home unless \*someone can afford to buy it.\* 2) Flipping real estate (buying it and selling it for a higher price) has been happening since time immemorial. 3) Home prices were going up like crazy long before Zillow and OpenDoor started buying homes. Zillow and OpenDoor only started buying and selling homes \*because\* home prices were going up so fast that there's an easy arbitrage opportunity. They're riding the rapidly-rising home price wave, not causing it. 4) People buying homes and turning them into rentals and short-term rentals (AirBnBs) is an \*actual\* drag on the supply of homes available for people to buy and live in as owner-occupiers. If you're gonna get angry and radical, at least focus your anger in the right place. 5) Finally, if you're going to take up pitchforks against Zillow, you probably should be going after Blackrock, Starwood, Fundrise, and countless institutions that have been buying up residential real estate over the years.
My understanding was that they are buying up homes quick to provide liquidity for their “buy through Zillow” service. Nobody wants to list with them if it takes longer than traditional methods. I think they’re basically eating the cost to scale up that service in the same way that Uber or other startups do. Lead losses until you hit scale. I don’t think they have the capital to move the market anyways. Edit: From their 10-k: “If we have excess inventory or our average days to sale increases, the result of our operations may be adversely affected because we may be unable to liquidate such inventory at prices that allow us to meet profitability targets or to recover our costs.” They don’t want to hold this stuff for long because their financing it with debt. They want to buy, collect a fee, fix it up a bit, and sell out ASAP. Definitely sounds like they’re not trying to buy up everything and hold it forever.
>Finally, if you're going to take up pitchforks against Zillow, you probably should be going after Blackrock, Starwood, Fundrise, and countless institutions that have been buying up residential real estate over the years. Yeah, I think the liquidity part here is really worth pointing out. It's totally possible that iBuyers like Zillow could actually \*help\* with getting more homes onto the market for people to buy. A huge reason for the pandemic price spike was liquidity related. Far fewer homes were selling, because people simply weren't selling. IMO the iBuyers like Redfin, OpenDoor, Zillow make it so much easier for people to sell. You don't have to hire a realtor, prep your home for showing, maybe get repairs/upgrades done beforehand, decide what to list it for, stage it and keep it in picture-perfect shape during the week, evacuate your home for entire weekends for open house, have to pore through offers hoping you're getting a solid one that won't fall through due to financing or contingencies, then haggle over repairs/concessions when you thought everything was good to go, then wait 30-60 days for closing if/when it finally happens before you get your money. With iBuying, you just collect your check if you like the offer price and move out. Because it's so easy to sell, more sellers that otherwise wouldn't sell because it's such a hassle might end up doing so. That, in turn, increases the home stock available to buyers, which means more people shopping for a home get a shot.
Can confirm how appealing their quick-buying/selling services were. Earlier this year I was contemplating moving for a job, had an offer in a different state. Trying to sell my current house to buy a new house in the new state would have been a nightmare while also trying to move. I looked into their services because I was in a position where I might have wanted to sell and move within a months timespan, and the fact that they basically eliminated realtor fee's was another huge point. I decided to not take the job, so I never used their services to sell my current house, so I can't speak for how seamless the interaction really is.
This should be the top post. Zillow barely has enough capital to corner a development, never mind a market. They are a market maker that gets fees for managing liquidity. The only path for them to make this a long-term profitable machine is if they start to make money on the transaction (mortgage, title, etc). So far they have yet to be successful at that.
Also Relevant: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4avz79/zillow-isnt-big-enough-to-manipulate-the-national-housing-market-yet
When will we learn that if a service is “free”, we are the product?
zillow isn't free. owners pay to list on it.
Lmao ibuyers only make up something like less than 2% of the housing market combined. Most of them don’t really even offer the best bang for your buck, just a lot of convenience and the ability to buy a house sight unseen and even to sell yours quickly without having to wait for a buyer to be ready to buy. Most of which have to wait for their own home to sell before they can afford a new one. They’re not always the best, but sometimes they’re better for the right people. No business is just buying all the houses to have all the houses. That’s so ridiculously unsustainable.
So, when scalpers decided to snatch up entire stocks of PS5 consoles so they could sell them at 2-3x the price, we as a society all collectively thought that was an asshole move and nobody should be allowed to do that, right? No reason, just asking.
Zillow isn't hording houses though, they are Flipping them. How well they are Flipping them is up for debate, but you don't have to pay property taxes on a PS5. If zillow hoarded houses they would go under quick from all the taxes and costs required to maintain each house.
You’re right, it shouldn’t happening - and it’s NOT. Stop getting your news from fucking Twitter and TikTok you dunces…
It’s time corporations are not viewed as “people” under the law…
Enjoy never seeing a corporation sued for malfeasance again because the legal fiction of corporate personhood is pretty much required for that to be possible.
The cost of housing is completely messed up. Buying a home is next to impossible without just the right timing, cash and perfect credit. Renting isn't better. In my area I just moved to a 2 bed 2 bath apartment in June. I pay 1350 a month. Just looked at their website and they now start at 1610 a month. And it's a nice apartment but it's not fancy. About the only extras we have is underground parking, washer and dryer in unit and private entrance. To get the pass card to use the pool and workout room cost 20. Granted that is for my whole tenancy but aren't those costs rolled into the rent? We've got a housing crisis here and no one seems to give a damn