Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by mlinhares on Thursday October 29, 2026 @12:40AM
(#50284643)
Everyone is a genius in a bull market. I remember a friend saying they were going to buy teslas to then re-sell them at a higher price around the same time because "teslas aren't like normal cars, they're an appreciating asset".
Thankfully he ended up not having enough money to pull this off so didn't lose everything either.
Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by andy_ppp on Thursday October 29, 2026 @03:03AM
(#50285421)
Looking at how a lot of modern cars are just made of glued together plastic (Mat Armstrong’s channel amongst others) I’m not at all surprised people are buying used models more regularly.
Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by paxy on Thursday October 29, 2026 @06:40AM
(#50286977)
Can make it work with a lot of things if you have a crystal ball. And if you do somehow have this genius intellect why bother with buying/selling GPUs? Just trade the stock.
Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by Imustaskforhelp on Thursday October 29, 2026 @08:34AM
(#50287937)
> Can make it work with a lot of things if you have a crystal ball. And if you do somehow have this genius intellect why bother with buying/selling GPUs? Just trade the stock.
Even with trading, you can't really know if the strategy that you have made which might work first time is because of luck (crystal ball) or analysis. You might believe its analysis because why not but repeating that strategy consistently over a long period of time is downright near impossible.
And then you realize that most of the traders lose money and there have been systematically proven to be basically very little alpha if any and you are better off just investing within the index funds and focusing much more on increasing the amount of money that you can save (increasing your salary, finding ways to save money etc.)
Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by dylan604 on Thursday October 29, 2026 @02:29AM
(#50285207)
I heard people were buying property before this year's Wold Cup that were near the stadiums so they could rent them out and then sell them after. Now, sellers are having to lower the asking prices, and that's just a few months after the tourney. Honestly, I hope those asshats are taking it at a loss
Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by Ntrails on Thursday October 29, 2026 @09:41AM
(#50288893)
Back when they came out a guy I knew bought a new mini every 6 months, selling the previous one to cover the cost and indeed profit. Essentially there was scarcity + excess demand so the car now was worth more money vs than one after the 12 month waiting list or whatever.
Of course it stopped working after a few rounds, but it wasn't a bad play whilst it worked!
Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by lifeisloving on Thursday October 29, 2026 @02:35AM
(#50285255)
During the crazy low rates period, I built some CRM tools for some people where all they would do is make 50k offers a month on homes across the country on zillow at like ~85% market value, get some under contract and double close at 110% to opendoor, and they'd collect the 20% or so at closing. They just would put earnest money down. They made millions doing this before opendoor said something.
Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by Quarrel on Thursday October 29, 2026 @07:02AM
(#50287159)
These cases are so weird.
The share price fell, so lawyers race to the courthouse to file a class action suit, because there is a first-to-file doctrine for these types of cases.
Then they don't necessarily try and prove harm, they just want to settle & get paid for their own inflated costs.
Meanwhile, the people that they are supposedly representing, ie shareholders at the time of the fall, are overwhelimingly still shareholders. So any payout they get is from their own proportion of money they already own in the company, minus legal fees.
It does however screw foreign holders and a few other classes of shareholders, to the benefit of the lawyers, and to lower the loss the shareholders take by getting their own money back.
Re:Zillow to pay $212.5M to settle class action for real est...
by dlenski on Thursday October 29, 2026 @10:20PM
(#50299105)
I don't understand how this was fraud against shareholders.
Zillow's plan was to offer to buy homes sight-unseen in targeted areas, using an algorithmic pricing scheme based almost entirely on location and limited home info. They hoped, I think, to gain substantially market power by owning a lot of the available inventory in the targeted areas.
Was it a stupid business plan? Yes, it was clearly a stupid businessplan. The plan invited an "adverse selection" effect wherein homeowners would accept their offers only if Zillow had offered substantially more than what the homeowners could reasonably expect to get on the open market.
I remember hearing a Marketplace radio segment on the program like a week after it launched, where it was completely obvious that this was going on.
It was a pretty clear business model, with a glaring and predictable flaw. Shareholders may have lost money, but I don't see how they were defrauded or misled.
Thankfully he ended up not having enough money to pull this off so didn't lose everything either.
Also if you adjust for inflation? (Which exploded after COVID)
Even with trading, you can't really know if the strategy that you have made which might work first time is because of luck (crystal ball) or analysis. You might believe its analysis because why not but repeating that strategy consistently over a long period of time is downright near impossible.
And then you realize that most of the traders lose money and there have been systematically proven to be basically very little alpha if any and you are better off just investing within the index funds and focusing much more on increasing the amount of money that you can save (increasing your salary, finding ways to save money etc.)
https://www.bogleheads.org/ for those of you interested.
Of course it stopped working after a few rounds, but it wasn't a bad play whilst it worked!
The share price fell, so lawyers race to the courthouse to file a class action suit, because there is a first-to-file doctrine for these types of cases.
Then they don't necessarily try and prove harm, they just want to settle & get paid for their own inflated costs.
Meanwhile, the people that they are supposedly representing, ie shareholders at the time of the fall, are overwhelimingly still shareholders. So any payout they get is from their own proportion of money they already own in the company, minus legal fees.
It does however screw foreign holders and a few other classes of shareholders, to the benefit of the lawyers, and to lower the loss the shareholders take by getting their own money back.
Zillow's plan was to offer to buy homes sight-unseen in targeted areas, using an algorithmic pricing scheme based almost entirely on location and limited home info. They hoped, I think, to gain substantially market power by owning a lot of the available inventory in the targeted areas.
Was it a stupid business plan? Yes, it was clearly a stupid businessplan. The plan invited an "adverse selection" effect wherein homeowners would accept their offers only if Zillow had offered substantially more than what the homeowners could reasonably expect to get on the open market.
I remember hearing a Marketplace radio segment on the program like a week after it launched, where it was completely obvious that this was going on.
It was a pretty clear business model, with a glaring and predictable flaw. Shareholders may have lost money, but I don't see how they were defrauded or misled.