How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

Re:How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M by tshaddox on Friday March 18, 2022 @03:43PM (#30726601)

> My perspective is that a necessity of life (land) has started bumping up against the limits of nature. Population has drastically increased, and for various reasons such as increased access to information, economic agglomeration, etc, certain areas of land are in far more demand than others relative to supply.

I think this is another all-too-convenient scapegoat, similar to "we just need more houses." I would again suggest that perhaps the problem really truly is that people are using houses as collectibles rather than as places to live.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M by lotsofpulp on Friday March 18, 2022 @03:49PM (#30726670)

As an illustration of how different the supply/demand situation is across the US, see this data:

https://www.redfin.com/news/?p=73975

All the data I see does not indicate that people are buying regular houses as collectibles in hot markets. There is simply that much demand and basically no supply, especially in western cities. I do not have hard data on how many of these sales are owner occupied or not, but from personal experience over the past 10+ years, none of these neighborhoods seem empty for part or all of the year.

[ Parent | on HN ]