Matt Levine wrote about Zillow's failed flipping business in his newsletter last year. The way he described it seemed less evil than I imagined. I had imagined corporations trying to corner a market so that they could sell at inflated prices.

Instead, it sounded more like Zillow was providing a service of adding extra liquidity, which can be useful. For example, if I want to move to another house, but it's going to take me 90 days to find a buyer and close, I might be willing to pay a premium to sell it to Zillow so that I can get out faster.

I don't know if that accurately characterizes Redfin's business, but I think there's more to it than just evil corporations making life miserable for everyone else.