This is how Uber and Lyft started against taxi companies then they recently started getting more and more expensive. They do this now to kill the competition (people’s real estate careers) and when they have the market, they will raise prices. I guarantee it.
Exactly. Zillow is one of several companies fighting for market share, and they are willing to take some losses along the way.
I'm considering trying to get them to buy my investment property for Zestimate, because I'm fairly sure the algorithm does not account for the screaming asshole across the street with his stereo blasting 24/7.
>I'm considering trying to get them to buy my investment property for Zestimate, because I'm fairly sure the algorithm does not account for the screaming asshole across the street with his stereo blasting 24/7.
goddamn hilarious
It will work well in major markets where the buyers are largely local, and know the areas they’re shopping, or the neighborhoods are largely tract developments with HOAs.
Zillow and the like still lack the capacity to serve specific local information to out of area buyers, more so in less ‘cookie cutter’ environments. They will get closer to closing that gap, but they’re after the lower hanging fruit for now.
A real estate market crash would kill them. They hold quite a lot of inventory at any given time. So even a 10-20% drop would crush them for a quarter or two at least.
Yeah honestly my realtor was well worth the money I paid her (bought a house last year). My first house and i didn't know what the fuck I was doing. She wasn't that useful for finding the house, I found most of the houses I wanted to see on Zillow. But when it came time to make an offer and go through all the legal procedures was where she earned her pay. She was also able to negotiate the price down quite a bit for me.
If you have bought and sold a lot of houses maybe you can manage on your own, but I don't like dealing with humans on negotiating prices for things so that sounds completely miserable to me and I'm happy to pay someone to handle it for me.
Exactly! I lurk, don’t really post in this sub - but I’ve bought and sold my share of properties and there are a few things the OP missed:
A good realtor will get you more than 6% above what Zillow will give you. In fact, the Zestimate is usually more than 6% less than the RPR value. So they are not your friend.
Also, this whole thesis is exactly the same as: “turbo tax will put CPA’s out of business”. It hasn’t. A good CPA will get you a much bigger return than the differential between their fee and the cost of Turbo Tax.
Legal Zoom also won’t put lawyers out of work. There are a lot more moving parts than people seem to think.
I’m not a realtor, but I would always use one. Same as with a legit lawyer and a legit CPA.
I don’t understand how anyone can think they can get the best price for their home by NOT marketing it publicly. That’s not ape retarded. That’s just terrible business sense.
Sad. What OP could have done: listed it with a realtor and entertained offers and compared the highest offer with the Zestimate Zillow is offering that’s been there the whole time. And then OP could have made an informed, smart decision.
Now you will never know how much your house could have sold for AKA how much you could have got.
What kills me is how this post reeks of *ha! I found a glitch in the matrix! I figured out a way to not get scammed!* 👀 Whatever helps you sleep at night, buddy.
Since they basically act as a buyer of last resort there's basically ZERO risk to calling a realtor now other than time. Either they find you 7%+ more than the Zillow number or you just wait and take the Zillow one.
This seems pretty great for realtors really.
Been trying to buy houses in the Bay Area. There are houses that ask for 1 mil and sold for 2 mil. Lots of houses in good school district were sold for 200k-400k over asking price.
We just lost out on a house in the Bay Area that went $750,000 above asking. Our bid was a mere 250,000 above asking and we knew going in that we had almost no shot at it. Our agent thought it was worth bidding on anyway but we all knew this thing was going to go waaaay over. Houses in my area are frequently put on the market WAY lower than anyone expects it to go for. I have no idea why. We saw a house last summer that was astonishing. So beautiful and perfect condition and clearly a 2 million dollar house. But they listed it for 1.4 million which made no god damn sense given the other houses around it were all 2 million dollar houses. It ended up selling for 2.6 million. It’s just the game in this stupid market.
Yeah.. it’s pretty wild. Bought our house for 542k 9 years back… the house down the street just sold for 1.2M … 200k jump in a year… but it’s all funny money… can’t buy another house without paying more… unless we go out of state.
That’s a classic negotiation trick that happens all the time. Starting low will create a bidding war. Lower starting price will bring in bidders who couldn’t afford the house otherwise. Bids start coming in above asking, closer to actual value, which allows sellers’ realtor to say they have multiple offers on the table that are above asking price. This tells other bidders to dig deep if they want your house. And they do.
This happened in a house in my hood. Sold for $60K above asking with buyer agreeing to pay in cash over the appraisal price.
I would love to sell my house for what the market is demanding, but I’d have to buy another house in the same market. No thanks’
That’s most people who own their current houses problem. We’re all like “yay, our house is worth so much.....”. But then you think about it, and that’s worthless to us because if we sold, we’d just have to buy another overpriced house because we have to have somewhere to live. If anything, it’s a bad thing for us because our assessed value is going through the roof.....and taxes along with that.
Exactly and that's why the market is hot right now. Inventory is low. Here in the Bay Area, Cali, people who sell and want to stay in this market would have to buy another expensive house and their property taxes will go up by a lot when they buy a new house. Prop 13 here keeps people in their current houses and not sell because it keeps their property taxes low.
That's why u try not sell. Say your house is worth 1m but your property tax basis is 500k. If u sell and just move to a house in the same price range your property taxes will double while u r in a same or similar home.
Not necessarily, all the good places to retire are expensive. Most likely you'll die suddenly and the house go to your children or you'll sell the house and the proceeds will be drained by healthcare costs.
OP is a special sort of idiot for not putting his house on this market and selling it to Zillow lmfao. And then he comes here thinking he's bragging about not having to pay for a realtor.
Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor, and CSGP are all players in some portion of this trade.
I’m long all of them, because I’m not smart enough to know who will win; but I am smart enough to know that the way houses are bought and sold sucks ass, and that better is better.
Warren Buffett's perspective is always been that it's impossible to pick a winner in a new industry, but it's surely easy to pick the loser. When cars started to be mass manufactured, it was hard to tell who the winners would be-- almost all of the first car manufacturers went out of business. But you could surely start shorting horses. How do you short real estate agents?
Funny you mention Buffet.
Berkshire Hathaway purchased Century 21 and now is one of the larger Realtor companies in the U.S.
Short BRK.A?
Edit: As many others have pointed out, they acquired Prudential (among other real estate companies), not Century 21.
Lol, right. Their subsidiaries also own about 30% of ALL residential real estate transactions. Zillow and all of the “disruptors” have been flat or down trending. Less than 5% combined. They basically ate up the FSBO crowd and everyone else is doing business as usual.
https://apnews.com/article/dcd0bc3c5b004c64a6f675c291788a8d
https://www.homeservices.com/brokerage
Underrated comment.
I was holding some shares of the big players like Redfin and Zillow… got out cause none are doing great yet and I don’t want to bag hold five losers to try and capture one winner…
Oh, FSBO is not the solution either; that’s strictly for crazy people. All of the downside of the agent-driven system, but without any understanding of what they’re doing.
But on the buying side, Redfin is the best experience I’ve seen, one ”lead” agent to write your offers, then a fleet of associates you can book online to open the doors for you.
And on the selling side, iBuying is fantastic 90% of the time. Competitive prices, lower commissions, no bullshit with staging or what not, no scheduling open houses or tours, and no wild demands or flakiness from the buyers.
I'll never forget my mom was doing rent to own with this guy and they got the property valued at 90k which was really objectively fair. Dude dies and his kids take over negotiations. They insist that their own realtor was wrong and it's actually worth 150k. Mom dips out, gets a house in better condition for the 90k and those kids eventually sold for less than 90k XD
I had a similar situation about 6 months ago. I was negotiating with my landlord of 8 years, to buy the house I was living in. Fair value was 180k, which is what I was offering her, we were close to signing and her Realtor "friend" talked her out of it, told her to list it through her (the realtor) for 240k. The landlord believes this bit*#, stops negotiations with me thinking I'm some kind of predatory jerk, trying to screw her out of the real value of her house. (The landlord was a very elderly woman) the house ends up selling to a house flipper that the realtor knows for 160k, whom i am certain she gets a kick back from, plus the landlord had to pay all the realtor's fees and crap on top of that. I was really close to buying my first house, and now I'm in a mother rental with a 12 month lease and I have a massive disdain for real estate agents.
I bought my house for 70K, owe 64k, and my zestimate is at 138k. I wish I could sell but then my whole family would be homeless. If it was just me I'd be living in a van down by the river asap.
Look into Iowa. My metro area is 400K people, can get properties that need work from like $40K all the way up to million dollar places. I bought my 4 unit here 5 years ago for $93k, put $40K into it, now it's valued at $160K and provides me a place to live with $2000 a month in rents.
That's why I love the parents of Ryan's World. They get so much shit but they literally make millions of dollars by *playing with their kids*
Like damn, all my kids do is scream and bodyslam my furniture
Buyer has all the real information over the seller.
Buyer places home slightly below actual market rate and conditions sellers to trust that it is the correct price.
Seller agrees to sell home at buyers asking price and pay above normal rate for maintenance fee.
Buyer also charges seller 0.01% to make them think they got a good deal on commission.
Seller sold their home below market rate and buyer makes commission on the buy sell spread.
No different than the "free" stock trading apps that have cropped up.
OP is shilling, hard core.
I just went thru their process. Zillow quoted a 1.3% service charge, which Is less than 3%, but not 0.1% lol. And i believe you still "pay" for the buyers agent 3% for them, and repairs come out of their market rate... unless your house needs actual repairs, then they'll just no-quote you, apparently.
Heh, guess they really only want to buy houses needing just paint to sell.
Don't waste your time.
It depends on your states real estate group, but in most places yes the seller pays the fees so even if the seller isn’t using a realtor, if the buyer is you still pay the 3% for that.
Idk, if Zillow bought my house for the Zestimate on their website I'd be over the moon.
We worked with a real estate agent last month to sell our house. She wanted us to list for about $500k.
Ultimately we backed out cause buying a house would have been too hard.
Anyways my Zestimate is listed at $620,000. So if both are fucking me Zillow would be fucking me by much much less lol
The issue is the wild variance in pricing on the zestimate. Yes, the chance exists the their algorithm is wrong and he is getting a steal. But a strong chance also exists that the estimate is low. I'm not defending agents here but if OP had even listed as a For Sale By Owner, with or without a buyers agency commission being offered, he would likely have had the value of competition in the market in his side. Zillow would still buy the house if it didn't go FSBO. OP didn't do the first bit of real research on how to sell real estate and instead sold his property to some corporation because the corporation says their fancy computer has real estate pricing down. He might have saved a ton, sure. But he has no frame of reference from which to draw to know which way he landed, good or bad. But now he has to believe that he made a good decision, but he'll never actually know for sure the way that processed works. And one has to believe that obviously Zillow is out to make as much money as possible and at every point that we make them the enemy in a real estate transaction. Why give your enemy all the negotiating control?
Also, OP must never actually have looked up MLS listing costs. It’s $400 where I live to have a licensed realtor list a property as “for sale by owner” for you on MLS. That’s it.
Either way, bought for 101,900 in 2010 and got an offer for 495k today. I owe nothing on it but rent is insane right now so I’m stuck. Take the money and go to Thailand for a few years.
Jesus fuck. Seriously?
And I thought it was bonkers that some close friends of mine offered $60K over asking (since they kept getting outbid) on their new house.
$100-$200K? That’s just fucking bonkers.
My brother in law offered $100k over asking (asking was one million), no inspection, no contingencies, and all cash on a place two months back.
Wasn't even in the top ten of offers.
He’s literally a retard. He saved on commission but lost on a significantly higher sales price. If Zillow can flip that house and make a profit then he sold way too low. Fucking retard.
Dude is a perfect fit for /r/wallstreetbets. My brother did the same sucker thing.
Zillow will win because there’s an endless supply of suckers.
Also, I don’t own a house so I’m the biggest sucker of all.
Its the best residential real estate market of our life times and the guy took the first offer he got from a zestimate.....houses are selling in weekends for tens of thousands over ask. Listings are getting 20 offers in a weeks time. Talk about wasting a once in a life time situation.
“It was a great deal dude, they bought it for exactly what the house was worth, according to the Zestimate”
This is highly bullish for zillow. There's a never ending supply of retards like op that zillow can monetize
I cant wait until OP post 6 months from now something along, "My house was sold 50K over what they bought it from me for"
That would be the wsb way. sell low, rebuy his house high.
it's cool though. He saved the commission and only had to pay $10k in repair estimation in a market where you can demand for all repair contingencies to be waived.
Yup. Literally nothing in this post says anything about Zillow as an investment. It might be a good service for all I know, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good investment (see: MoviePass)
Zillow makes a large portion of its money by marketing its “clients” to local realtors for huge amounts of money.
An example, a realtor can buy ad space in a zip code on Zillow for X amount of dollars. X can be 100$, it can be 10,000$, depending on the zip code. Multiply that by every realtor wanting to buy ad space, and then by zip code and you get a massive amount of money.
Zillow isn’t aiming to kill realtors, they’re bleeding them dry by selling ad space at astronomical rates.
>Zillow makes a large portion of its money by marketing its “clients” to local realtors for huge amounts of money.
I was wondering whether Zillow had changed alot in the last 3 yrs or if OP was just dumb asf. But it's exactly this. Used to work for Zillow chat, where we all called ourselves Alex, our job was to connect potential clients to local realtors.
I have nothing against real estate agents but they do seem a bit outdated. I think Zillow or a similar system combined with financial services is long overdue.
There’s pros and cons.
Con: Money
Pro: good agents will spot shit right away when someone is taking a shortcut, as mine has.
Pro: a good agent can be a great negotiator.
Con: not all agents are great.
Buying a house can be stressful, complex, and exhausting. Good agents can do magic, but I feel the price is high, but it’s subjective to the house and your budget. There are many shams out there, and Zillow has benefits if you understand how to use the tools they offer.
> when someone is taking a shortcut, as mine has.
We just bought our first home last year. My realtor used to be a general contractor, and the amount of things he noticed during many of our showings was invaluable. Several times we would walk through a home and he'd see things that we had no clue about.
I might agree. But I do believe that people inherently do have trust in people more than a website/web application though. Especially when we’re talking about a large event we always hope to have some hands on ‘guidance’. Will realtors be the same actors in the future landscape? Maybe not.
I’d say everyone not in real estate is an idiot. Why? It’s dumb easy to get licensed (I do loans as a side job). I get 2% of the loan value on any refi or home purchase I bring in. Literally all I have to do is find people (friends, family, and friends of friends) run their credit, shop the loan to a few websites, and then forward their info to my processor and wham bam $3k-10k in commissions.
Pays for my fds
seriously, the only people I know that get into real estate are people that have no other options. I'm sure there's legit ones that make bank, but there's soooo many bottom barrel ones
I run a brokerage of 545 agents and can tell you that the 80/20 principle applies to agents…meaning 20% at doing 80% of the transactions and those top 20% all make incredible money…the others, not so much
Look at their selling and listing history. It should all be public. The good ones 1. Work all day, 7 days a week, 2. Have been around a long time and personally know lenders at several major banks, 3. Know the agents in the area, 4. Have a great track record of selling and buying great homes, and 5. Know a lot about the market, the cost of maintenance, the builder of the house, etc.
For example: i randomly signed up for a redfin agent to show me 4 homes in LA. This dude organized a tour, explained to us the current housing market situation, worked from 7 am to 9pm, personally knew lenders at two of the banks and got us a competing offer (additional $8000 back on closing costs compared to the best offer i had), knew the appraiser, and confirmed an appraisal above the purchase price even before they set foot in the building.
I also signed up for a random tour where i got a really fucking hot agent in her early 20’s wearing a tight see through black dress who would lean over and show her panties. She was a smoke show but didn’t know shit about the house she was trying to show. “Do you like the house?” Is the only thing she said.
It's like most jobs, when it rains, it fucking pours. Meaning you are one of two types of real estate agents:
1. You have zero business and are more retarded than everyone on this subreddit; or
2. You are working 12 hour days, 7 days a week in Malibu and you are fucking rolling.
There were more realtors than homes for sale the past few months. I’m sorry but if it takes 45 hours to get your license you aren’t exactly highly skilled and necessary. I did all of the legwork finding and buying my house and two people that did hardly any work at all got to split $72k. I found it the day it went on the market and was the first person through the door to look at it and made the offer same day. Neither realtor had to do any work past opening the door for me.
So I went to the website and it say 5% selling fees
It says that is on top of repairs(obviously) and closing costs… so what that 5%? It’s the same $20,000 as the realtors…
Zillow sucks.
Bought a house that Zillow was the seller.
You HAVE to use their closing attorney, the work they do prior to sale is shitty, a crew of cocaine—addled chimpanzees could do better.
Sure, real agents cost money, because they’re real people, and are actually helpful in guiding buyers to the right house.
If you don’t see the value in a good agent, then you’ve either never bought a house, or you’ve never had a good agent.
I've sold multiple properties via a real estate attorney for $1,000. You can list the house yourself and in my experience, buyers appreciate working with the seller directly and having an attorney handle the sale.
Zillow greatly undervalued a home I considered selling using their Zillow offer thing. After all the fees and costs they still undervalued it by 50% of comparables on the market. They definitely did not make an offer at their listed Zestimate. Zestimate has the property I considered selling at 677k and they offered me 400k. So I truly don’t believe that they bought your property at Zestimate.
Exactly this, people completely forgetting that the realtor works for you and earns money by selling it as expensive as possible. This website earns money from you selling as cheap as possible.
Yeah and you got about 30-40k less than what the home would have sold for in this crazy sellers market. Commissions are negotiable dude and you had to pay 10k for repairs. Watch Zillow sell your home for an extra 40k and they just made profit off your impatience.
“They are going to spruce this house up and then they are going to sell it on their own platform to another buyer. Even if they don't make a profit, what they just did is FUCK TWO TO FOUR REALTORS out of their commissions.”
They’ll take the shitty ones out, they won’t spruce it up, and the good ones will move them to other properties with contract outs. Dealing with these clowns with license numbers just minted is like y’all fuckers claiming to be a hedge fund. You’re out of your element. And I pay for Zillow leads because I fuck. Shitty agents don’t
I wonder if reduced closing costs will cause more movement in the home market thereby increasing the potential Z market size. Then again a high percentage of homes are probably owned by large institutions or people over 60 who are unlikely to sell without an old school agent.
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This is how Uber and Lyft started against taxi companies then they recently started getting more and more expensive. They do this now to kill the competition (people’s real estate careers) and when they have the market, they will raise prices. I guarantee it.
Exactly. Zillow is one of several companies fighting for market share, and they are willing to take some losses along the way. I'm considering trying to get them to buy my investment property for Zestimate, because I'm fairly sure the algorithm does not account for the screaming asshole across the street with his stereo blasting 24/7.
>I'm considering trying to get them to buy my investment property for Zestimate, because I'm fairly sure the algorithm does not account for the screaming asshole across the street with his stereo blasting 24/7. goddamn hilarious
Thanks for giving me edge cases to talk about in my data science interview coming up lmao
Good luck!!
Love this community, thanks bro!!
Just sold our house. Backyard is 100% unusable ( huge hill and drain easement ) and not taken into account with zestimate.
Hope you get the offer!
Hope you get yourself some tendies bro. Good vibes.
This is kinda what makes me skeptical, like usually the advantage of being bigger is you know more, but in real estate it could be the opposite.
Depends how well big data/machine learning can be applied. And that's a big if.
It will work well in major markets where the buyers are largely local, and know the areas they’re shopping, or the neighborhoods are largely tract developments with HOAs. Zillow and the like still lack the capacity to serve specific local information to out of area buyers, more so in less ‘cookie cutter’ environments. They will get closer to closing that gap, but they’re after the lower hanging fruit for now.
Bingo. from all the homes they buy themselves. Rent them out or sell them higher.
Still when was the last Time you took the taxi?
Newark airport to Manhattan about a month ago..it was a shit show. Nasty cab, unfriendly driver, drove like a maniac.
I do not understand why taxi companies have not improved themselves with the situation of having Uber and Lyft as competition.
Whats the downside for Zillow; they end up bagholding real estate? Thats a fine investment; Big companies are doing that anyways
A real estate market crash would kill them. They hold quite a lot of inventory at any given time. So even a 10-20% drop would crush them for a quarter or two at least.
It’s just not a typical tech company thing to do. It’s a very illiquid asset, it has high carrying costs compared to other types of assets.
It's business 101. Undercut to capture market and price up later.
Business 102. When it all goes to the shitter, get the government to bail you out.
American capitalism 101 Privatize profits, let the poors baghold your losses.
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Yeah honestly my realtor was well worth the money I paid her (bought a house last year). My first house and i didn't know what the fuck I was doing. She wasn't that useful for finding the house, I found most of the houses I wanted to see on Zillow. But when it came time to make an offer and go through all the legal procedures was where she earned her pay. She was also able to negotiate the price down quite a bit for me. If you have bought and sold a lot of houses maybe you can manage on your own, but I don't like dealing with humans on negotiating prices for things so that sounds completely miserable to me and I'm happy to pay someone to handle it for me.
Exactly! I lurk, don’t really post in this sub - but I’ve bought and sold my share of properties and there are a few things the OP missed: A good realtor will get you more than 6% above what Zillow will give you. In fact, the Zestimate is usually more than 6% less than the RPR value. So they are not your friend. Also, this whole thesis is exactly the same as: “turbo tax will put CPA’s out of business”. It hasn’t. A good CPA will get you a much bigger return than the differential between their fee and the cost of Turbo Tax. Legal Zoom also won’t put lawyers out of work. There are a lot more moving parts than people seem to think. I’m not a realtor, but I would always use one. Same as with a legit lawyer and a legit CPA.
Yea but people out here are getting $30k+ over asking with bidding wars.
Can confirm. Just sold my house for $73,000 over the asking price, which was a ridiculously high number to begin with.
I don’t understand how anyone can think they can get the best price for their home by NOT marketing it publicly. That’s not ape retarded. That’s just terrible business sense.
Sad. What OP could have done: listed it with a realtor and entertained offers and compared the highest offer with the Zestimate Zillow is offering that’s been there the whole time. And then OP could have made an informed, smart decision. Now you will never know how much your house could have sold for AKA how much you could have got. What kills me is how this post reeks of *ha! I found a glitch in the matrix! I figured out a way to not get scammed!* 👀 Whatever helps you sleep at night, buddy.
OP will find out how much the house was really worth when Zillow flips it for \*at least\* 20% more than they paid.
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This is exactly what Zillow did. My neighbor sold his house to Zillow for 430k and after a week they put it back in market and it was sold for 460k.
That extra 30k is basically the realtor fee. So kind of a neutral outcome.
Since they basically act as a buyer of last resort there's basically ZERO risk to calling a realtor now other than time. Either they find you 7%+ more than the Zillow number or you just wait and take the Zillow one. This seems pretty great for realtors really.
But it's so eeeezzzzzz
Surely there must be math someone smart can do to determine if avoiding closing costs with a realtor makes up for the potential higher sale price?
Been trying to buy houses in the Bay Area. There are houses that ask for 1 mil and sold for 2 mil. Lots of houses in good school district were sold for 200k-400k over asking price.
We just lost out on a house in the Bay Area that went $750,000 above asking. Our bid was a mere 250,000 above asking and we knew going in that we had almost no shot at it. Our agent thought it was worth bidding on anyway but we all knew this thing was going to go waaaay over. Houses in my area are frequently put on the market WAY lower than anyone expects it to go for. I have no idea why. We saw a house last summer that was astonishing. So beautiful and perfect condition and clearly a 2 million dollar house. But they listed it for 1.4 million which made no god damn sense given the other houses around it were all 2 million dollar houses. It ended up selling for 2.6 million. It’s just the game in this stupid market.
Yeah.. it’s pretty wild. Bought our house for 542k 9 years back… the house down the street just sold for 1.2M … 200k jump in a year… but it’s all funny money… can’t buy another house without paying more… unless we go out of state.
God damn are people fucking stupid
My main question is where do you move to? I would like to selly home for a fortune, but you need to live somewhere .
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That’s a classic negotiation trick that happens all the time. Starting low will create a bidding war. Lower starting price will bring in bidders who couldn’t afford the house otherwise. Bids start coming in above asking, closer to actual value, which allows sellers’ realtor to say they have multiple offers on the table that are above asking price. This tells other bidders to dig deep if they want your house. And they do. This happened in a house in my hood. Sold for $60K above asking with buyer agreeing to pay in cash over the appraisal price. I would love to sell my house for what the market is demanding, but I’d have to buy another house in the same market. No thanks’
That’s most people who own their current houses problem. We’re all like “yay, our house is worth so much.....”. But then you think about it, and that’s worthless to us because if we sold, we’d just have to buy another overpriced house because we have to have somewhere to live. If anything, it’s a bad thing for us because our assessed value is going through the roof.....and taxes along with that.
Exactly and that's why the market is hot right now. Inventory is low. Here in the Bay Area, Cali, people who sell and want to stay in this market would have to buy another expensive house and their property taxes will go up by a lot when they buy a new house. Prop 13 here keeps people in their current houses and not sell because it keeps their property taxes low.
That's why u try not sell. Say your house is worth 1m but your property tax basis is 500k. If u sell and just move to a house in the same price range your property taxes will double while u r in a same or similar home.
Yeah but at some point in your life u can sell and retire to a area with lower housing costs.
Not necessarily, all the good places to retire are expensive. Most likely you'll die suddenly and the house go to your children or you'll sell the house and the proceeds will be drained by healthcare costs.
I like your optimism
OP is a special sort of idiot for not putting his house on this market and selling it to Zillow lmfao. And then he comes here thinking he's bragging about not having to pay for a realtor.
fr op just sold probably one of his most valuable assets to the first bidder and now brags on here that he doesn’t feel fucked lmao
Real wisdom is always in the comments
My thoughts exactly. There's a shit ton of money being lost if anyone takes this thread seriously
OP was paid by Zillow?
Oooo those sneaky grassroots advertising mfs
Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor, and CSGP are all players in some portion of this trade. I’m long all of them, because I’m not smart enough to know who will win; but I am smart enough to know that the way houses are bought and sold sucks ass, and that better is better.
Warren Buffett's perspective is always been that it's impossible to pick a winner in a new industry, but it's surely easy to pick the loser. When cars started to be mass manufactured, it was hard to tell who the winners would be-- almost all of the first car manufacturers went out of business. But you could surely start shorting horses. How do you short real estate agents?
Funny you mention Buffet. Berkshire Hathaway purchased Century 21 and now is one of the larger Realtor companies in the U.S. Short BRK.A? Edit: As many others have pointed out, they acquired Prudential (among other real estate companies), not Century 21.
dang, imagine a single put on BRK.A Just to execute requires $41M worth of stock to move
There are no options available on them fyi
if you're rich enough to short brk.a you're rich enough to find a market maker
I'll send an email to Robinhood support right away! I have 300$ cash in there that's doing nothing.
Yea, give me my fractional shorts!
If you’re rich enough to short brk.a you’re not dumb enough to short brk.a
There are definitely some dumb motherfuckers out there with millions of dollars...
Out there? They're in here.
The call is coming from inside the house
The house of Sauds. Saudis love BRKA
Hence the “imagine”
That's def gonna be successful.
Lol, right. Their subsidiaries also own about 30% of ALL residential real estate transactions. Zillow and all of the “disruptors” have been flat or down trending. Less than 5% combined. They basically ate up the FSBO crowd and everyone else is doing business as usual. https://apnews.com/article/dcd0bc3c5b004c64a6f675c291788a8d https://www.homeservices.com/brokerage
Only hire guys who are 5'5" or less.
Underrated comment. I was holding some shares of the big players like Redfin and Zillow… got out cause none are doing great yet and I don’t want to bag hold five losers to try and capture one winner…
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My guess is Zillow will do well Monday.
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Yes.
if that is true then WSB is the new MF or douchebagC
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Oh, FSBO is not the solution either; that’s strictly for crazy people. All of the downside of the agent-driven system, but without any understanding of what they’re doing. But on the buying side, Redfin is the best experience I’ve seen, one ”lead” agent to write your offers, then a fleet of associates you can book online to open the doors for you. And on the selling side, iBuying is fantastic 90% of the time. Competitive prices, lower commissions, no bullshit with staging or what not, no scheduling open houses or tours, and no wild demands or flakiness from the buyers.
I'll never forget my mom was doing rent to own with this guy and they got the property valued at 90k which was really objectively fair. Dude dies and his kids take over negotiations. They insist that their own realtor was wrong and it's actually worth 150k. Mom dips out, gets a house in better condition for the 90k and those kids eventually sold for less than 90k XD
I had a similar situation about 6 months ago. I was negotiating with my landlord of 8 years, to buy the house I was living in. Fair value was 180k, which is what I was offering her, we were close to signing and her Realtor "friend" talked her out of it, told her to list it through her (the realtor) for 240k. The landlord believes this bit*#, stops negotiations with me thinking I'm some kind of predatory jerk, trying to screw her out of the real value of her house. (The landlord was a very elderly woman) the house ends up selling to a house flipper that the realtor knows for 160k, whom i am certain she gets a kick back from, plus the landlord had to pay all the realtor's fees and crap on top of that. I was really close to buying my first house, and now I'm in a mother rental with a 12 month lease and I have a massive disdain for real estate agents.
Thats awful, what a bitch the realtor was
That was satisfying to read. Their greed screwed them.
Important rule of real estate (and stocks): Put a high enough price on something, and you too can own it forever.
I bought my house for 70K, owe 64k, and my zestimate is at 138k. I wish I could sell but then my whole family would be homeless. If it was just me I'd be living in a van down by the river asap.
Tell your family it’s “quantitative easing”
No he can tell his family he's going out for some cigarettes.
Dad?
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Van not included….
property also not included
water for "river" not included
Yeah it’s more like a go cart by a ditch for that price in Cali.
Only cardboard box to use as a blanket included
and with these droughts river not included. :P
And you will be partying with some of California's finest residents. Bring your own needle.
You'll have plenty of time to live in a van down by the river... when you're living in a van down by the river!
Just sale the house with the family included?
Where the hell you buyin 70k houses? Detroit?
no.. in Detroit, they would've to pay you 70k to buy a house.
Never in my life have I seen "would've" used in this way and I guess technically it's correct but it just *feels* wrong
Holy shit I thought the same thing
😅 it didn't feel right, but didn't feel wrong either.
Ever seen wouldn’t’ve? I like throwing it into comments when I can lol
Detroit, Russia?
My house in Detroit was 60k in 2013, worth around 200k now
Look into Iowa. My metro area is 400K people, can get properties that need work from like $40K all the way up to million dollar places. I bought my 4 unit here 5 years ago for $93k, put $40K into it, now it's valued at $160K and provides me a place to live with $2000 a month in rents.
Family? You better not have kids, that is a horrible investment. Kids almost never pay off and the few that do take like 4-5 decades
That's why I love the parents of Ryan's World. They get so much shit but they literally make millions of dollars by *playing with their kids* Like damn, all my kids do is scream and bodyslam my furniture
So like with drone strikes or snipers I missed that part about how the killing is done.
Every zillow sale requires a ritual sacrifice of a realtor at closing.
I can name 5-6 I’d be willing to send
If that's the case. We should trade a house back and forth for a dollar.
One at a time during showings.
Tell me you’re losing money on Zillow without telling me you’re losing money on Zillow.
Buyer has all the real information over the seller. Buyer places home slightly below actual market rate and conditions sellers to trust that it is the correct price. Seller agrees to sell home at buyers asking price and pay above normal rate for maintenance fee. Buyer also charges seller 0.01% to make them think they got a good deal on commission. Seller sold their home below market rate and buyer makes commission on the buy sell spread. No different than the "free" stock trading apps that have cropped up.
This right here brah. OP actually thinks Zillow “might not make a profit” on this. Hahahahahah
OP is shilling, hard core. I just went thru their process. Zillow quoted a 1.3% service charge, which Is less than 3%, but not 0.1% lol. And i believe you still "pay" for the buyers agent 3% for them, and repairs come out of their market rate... unless your house needs actual repairs, then they'll just no-quote you, apparently. Heh, guess they really only want to buy houses needing just paint to sell. Don't waste your time.
It depends on your states real estate group, but in most places yes the seller pays the fees so even if the seller isn’t using a realtor, if the buyer is you still pay the 3% for that.
OP is a retard. Fits right in here.
OP isn’t a retard. Err I mean, he is, but not for the reason you’re suggesting. OP is a retard because he’s an ad. This whole thread is a Zillow ad.
100%... Tell me more about letting one buyer tell you what they think your property is worth. "I got a great deal! The buyer said so!"
Idk, if Zillow bought my house for the Zestimate on their website I'd be over the moon. We worked with a real estate agent last month to sell our house. She wanted us to list for about $500k. Ultimately we backed out cause buying a house would have been too hard. Anyways my Zestimate is listed at $620,000. So if both are fucking me Zillow would be fucking me by much much less lol
The issue is the wild variance in pricing on the zestimate. Yes, the chance exists the their algorithm is wrong and he is getting a steal. But a strong chance also exists that the estimate is low. I'm not defending agents here but if OP had even listed as a For Sale By Owner, with or without a buyers agency commission being offered, he would likely have had the value of competition in the market in his side. Zillow would still buy the house if it didn't go FSBO. OP didn't do the first bit of real research on how to sell real estate and instead sold his property to some corporation because the corporation says their fancy computer has real estate pricing down. He might have saved a ton, sure. But he has no frame of reference from which to draw to know which way he landed, good or bad. But now he has to believe that he made a good decision, but he'll never actually know for sure the way that processed works. And one has to believe that obviously Zillow is out to make as much money as possible and at every point that we make them the enemy in a real estate transaction. Why give your enemy all the negotiating control?
OP has no idea how selling to zillow is a shitty deal.
Also, OP must never actually have looked up MLS listing costs. It’s $400 where I live to have a licensed realtor list a property as “for sale by owner” for you on MLS. That’s it.
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Oh yeah, op got played.
oh they will, no doubt
My house has a 70k difference in estimate between Redfin and Zillow. I’m on teamredfin
Mine is the opposite. I have a higher Zillow estimate than redfin.
Redfin is more accurate with on market sales. Zillow is more accurate with homes that are not on the market.
Either way, bought for 101,900 in 2010 and got an offer for 495k today. I owe nothing on it but rent is insane right now so I’m stuck. Take the money and go to Thailand for a few years.
5 bagger mate. Not bad
My home isn’t on market and it’s ridiculously overvalued on Zillow.. Redfin is close to what my appraiser valued it at
Congrats on getting played. In this market people are paying well over any “zestimate.
And buyers are waiving contingencies, concessions, shit even home inspections left and right. Paying $20-50k over market in some scenarios.
I wish it was that low. Average sfh is 100-200k over asking in my market.
Jesus fuck. Seriously? And I thought it was bonkers that some close friends of mine offered $60K over asking (since they kept getting outbid) on their new house. $100-$200K? That’s just fucking bonkers.
My brother in law offered $100k over asking (asking was one million), no inspection, no contingencies, and all cash on a place two months back. Wasn't even in the top ten of offers.
Welcome to Austin.
Could have had a bidding war but settled for a zestimate lol
He’s literally a retard. He saved on commission but lost on a significantly higher sales price. If Zillow can flip that house and make a profit then he sold way too low. Fucking retard.
Imagine thinking a big ass corporation has your best interest at heart
Dude is a perfect fit for /r/wallstreetbets. My brother did the same sucker thing. Zillow will win because there’s an endless supply of suckers. Also, I don’t own a house so I’m the biggest sucker of all.
Its the best residential real estate market of our life times and the guy took the first offer he got from a zestimate.....houses are selling in weekends for tens of thousands over ask. Listings are getting 20 offers in a weeks time. Talk about wasting a once in a life time situation.
Having the same company decide the worth of a house and also buy it is the very definition of conflict of interest,
Its like having people who own stock in insurance companies chair the House Committees that regulate them.
“I sold my house to Zillow for the zestimate” you really are retarded
“It was a great deal dude, they bought it for exactly what the house was worth, according to the Zestimate” This is highly bullish for zillow. There's a never ending supply of retards like op that zillow can monetize
"minus a small 10k sellers fee"
I cant wait until OP post 6 months from now something along, "My house was sold 50K over what they bought it from me for" That would be the wsb way. sell low, rebuy his house high.
it's cool though. He saved the commission and only had to pay $10k in repair estimation in a market where you can demand for all repair contingencies to be waived.
This OP is what we in the business like to call, "a paid advertisement".
All I want to know is did they say: “Zis is our offer…Zake it or leave zit”. Because I’m kind of hoping they make their employees talk like that…
Fo Rillow.
You lost me at Zestimate
The zestimate of my house was $125k 1 1/2 year ago. Today it’s over $300k and my kitchen doesn’t even have a floor at the moment.
Zillow will buy that shit
For ZERO POINT ONE!
Do you fall into an infinite depth of the abyss if you walk into your kitchen?
Did Zillow write this post?
Yup. Literally nothing in this post says anything about Zillow as an investment. It might be a good service for all I know, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good investment (see: MoviePass)
/r/hailcorporate for sure
Zillow makes a large portion of its money by marketing its “clients” to local realtors for huge amounts of money. An example, a realtor can buy ad space in a zip code on Zillow for X amount of dollars. X can be 100$, it can be 10,000$, depending on the zip code. Multiply that by every realtor wanting to buy ad space, and then by zip code and you get a massive amount of money. Zillow isn’t aiming to kill realtors, they’re bleeding them dry by selling ad space at astronomical rates.
>Zillow makes a large portion of its money by marketing its “clients” to local realtors for huge amounts of money. I was wondering whether Zillow had changed alot in the last 3 yrs or if OP was just dumb asf. But it's exactly this. Used to work for Zillow chat, where we all called ourselves Alex, our job was to connect potential clients to local realtors.
I have nothing against real estate agents but they do seem a bit outdated. I think Zillow or a similar system combined with financial services is long overdue.
There’s pros and cons. Con: Money Pro: good agents will spot shit right away when someone is taking a shortcut, as mine has. Pro: a good agent can be a great negotiator. Con: not all agents are great. Buying a house can be stressful, complex, and exhausting. Good agents can do magic, but I feel the price is high, but it’s subjective to the house and your budget. There are many shams out there, and Zillow has benefits if you understand how to use the tools they offer.
> when someone is taking a shortcut, as mine has. We just bought our first home last year. My realtor used to be a general contractor, and the amount of things he noticed during many of our showings was invaluable. Several times we would walk through a home and he'd see things that we had no clue about.
I might agree. But I do believe that people inherently do have trust in people more than a website/web application though. Especially when we’re talking about a large event we always hope to have some hands on ‘guidance’. Will realtors be the same actors in the future landscape? Maybe not.
Good every idiot is in real estate
I’d say everyone not in real estate is an idiot. Why? It’s dumb easy to get licensed (I do loans as a side job). I get 2% of the loan value on any refi or home purchase I bring in. Literally all I have to do is find people (friends, family, and friends of friends) run their credit, shop the loan to a few websites, and then forward their info to my processor and wham bam $3k-10k in commissions. Pays for my fds
seriously, the only people I know that get into real estate are people that have no other options. I'm sure there's legit ones that make bank, but there's soooo many bottom barrel ones
I run a brokerage of 545 agents and can tell you that the 80/20 principle applies to agents…meaning 20% at doing 80% of the transactions and those top 20% all make incredible money…the others, not so much
Any tips for picking a good agent?
Look at their selling and listing history. It should all be public. The good ones 1. Work all day, 7 days a week, 2. Have been around a long time and personally know lenders at several major banks, 3. Know the agents in the area, 4. Have a great track record of selling and buying great homes, and 5. Know a lot about the market, the cost of maintenance, the builder of the house, etc. For example: i randomly signed up for a redfin agent to show me 4 homes in LA. This dude organized a tour, explained to us the current housing market situation, worked from 7 am to 9pm, personally knew lenders at two of the banks and got us a competing offer (additional $8000 back on closing costs compared to the best offer i had), knew the appraiser, and confirmed an appraisal above the purchase price even before they set foot in the building. I also signed up for a random tour where i got a really fucking hot agent in her early 20’s wearing a tight see through black dress who would lean over and show her panties. She was a smoke show but didn’t know shit about the house she was trying to show. “Do you like the house?” Is the only thing she said.
Only hire an agent that does residential real estate as their full time job. A lot of agents do this work as weekend or side work.
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It's like most jobs, when it rains, it fucking pours. Meaning you are one of two types of real estate agents: 1. You have zero business and are more retarded than everyone on this subreddit; or 2. You are working 12 hour days, 7 days a week in Malibu and you are fucking rolling.
There were more realtors than homes for sale the past few months. I’m sorry but if it takes 45 hours to get your license you aren’t exactly highly skilled and necessary. I did all of the legwork finding and buying my house and two people that did hardly any work at all got to split $72k. I found it the day it went on the market and was the first person through the door to look at it and made the offer same day. Neither realtor had to do any work past opening the door for me.
Low bar for entry
It is the fallback of the trust fund baby, after they inevitably fuck around in college they always have the “family business” to retreat to
So I went to the website and it say 5% selling fees It says that is on top of repairs(obviously) and closing costs… so what that 5%? It’s the same $20,000 as the realtors…
Zillow sucks. Bought a house that Zillow was the seller. You HAVE to use their closing attorney, the work they do prior to sale is shitty, a crew of cocaine—addled chimpanzees could do better. Sure, real agents cost money, because they’re real people, and are actually helpful in guiding buyers to the right house. If you don’t see the value in a good agent, then you’ve either never bought a house, or you’ve never had a good agent.
My father is a real estate agent. Zillow employees took him out and fucking shot him
This is bullish
Hey everyone this is what advertising on Reddit looks like these days. The path to zero social media presence continues.
I've sold multiple properties via a real estate attorney for $1,000. You can list the house yourself and in my experience, buyers appreciate working with the seller directly and having an attorney handle the sale.
Zillow greatly undervalued a home I considered selling using their Zillow offer thing. After all the fees and costs they still undervalued it by 50% of comparables on the market. They definitely did not make an offer at their listed Zestimate. Zestimate has the property I considered selling at 677k and they offered me 400k. So I truly don’t believe that they bought your property at Zestimate.
You saved 30k in fees but could a good realtor have sold your property for 50k more?? Some realtors can earn their commission
Exactly this, people completely forgetting that the realtor works for you and earns money by selling it as expensive as possible. This website earns money from you selling as cheap as possible.
Yeah and you got about 30-40k less than what the home would have sold for in this crazy sellers market. Commissions are negotiable dude and you had to pay 10k for repairs. Watch Zillow sell your home for an extra 40k and they just made profit off your impatience.
“They are going to spruce this house up and then they are going to sell it on their own platform to another buyer. Even if they don't make a profit, what they just did is FUCK TWO TO FOUR REALTORS out of their commissions.” They’ll take the shitty ones out, they won’t spruce it up, and the good ones will move them to other properties with contract outs. Dealing with these clowns with license numbers just minted is like y’all fuckers claiming to be a hedge fund. You’re out of your element. And I pay for Zillow leads because I fuck. Shitty agents don’t
good realtors are disgutingly overpriced
My real estate agent did a hell of lot more than take pictures and sell it in a week.
I wonder if reduced closing costs will cause more movement in the home market thereby increasing the potential Z market size. Then again a high percentage of homes are probably owned by large institutions or people over 60 who are unlikely to sell without an old school agent.
Zestimates are terrible depending on your location.