Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money

Re:Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money by wiradikusuma on Saturday November 27, 2021 @12:21PM (#29361715)

Does anyone know where Zillow get its dataset from? I reckon it's essentially sale price? Can a "hobbyist" investor do the same?

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Re:Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money by andromeda-brain on Saturday November 27, 2021 @12:36PM (#29361823)

There's a lot of information that is only available to MLS members. Zillow used to not have access to this information, but they slowly brokered deals with MLSes around the country to get it.

One example: The MLS in Austin, TX recently banned publicly sharing a home's sold price. https://www.zillow.com/austin-tx-78701/sold/

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Re:Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money by MisterBastahrd on Saturday November 27, 2021 @01:35PM (#29362285)

Yeah, each MLS org has its own data set which is a giant pain in the ass for the newspapers who are publishing listings for the MLSes in their areas. I don't know if they ever standardized it, but I know that one of the first tasks I had as a new dev for a newspaper back in the early 00s was to build a tool to take the data and normalize it into a single CSV.

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