The Housing Bubble Blog

A report from the Phoenix Business Journal. "Homebuyers across the country are furious with Zillow Group Inc for canceling contracts. Compounding the issue is the fact that many of these homeowners are waiting for their new construction homes to be completed, pushing the sale of their existing...

A report from WKRN in Tennessee. "A broken deal has left a Murfreesboro couple with a broken dream after a case of iBuying went bad. Zach Griest, Owner of Zach Taylor Real Estate, says his clients are upset, counting on Zillow to close. They went under contract with them in September and planned to...

A report from News Corp on California. "The secluded longtime home of Arnold Schwarzenegger has hit the market, with $15 million (US$11m) price hopes. In 2013, the house was sold for US$12.9 million. The home is now being sold by its current owners for less than they bought it for. Located in...

A report from the LA Daily News in California. "Since 2000, U.S. inflation has averaged 2.2%, according to the Consumer Price Index, while rates on 30-year mortgages averaged 5%, according to Freddie Mac. So historically speaking, loans are usually priced 2.8 percentage points above these...

A weekend topic starting with BBN Times. "The amount of wealth in an economy should be related to the amount of income. For example, wealth in real estate will be linked to the income that people have available to pay for housing. The McKinsey Global Institute lays out some facts and offers some...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Southern California's cutthroat housing market has cooled in recent months. Price drops became more common. 'We were expecting at some point this buyer frenzy is going to cool off. We are seeing that now,' said Selma Hepp, an economist with...

A report from the Daily Democrat in California. "Tom Doyle bought a house in southwest Woodland for $675,000 last year in October. Doyle said that his family had been paying attention to the housing market, but it is very different from the market in Northern Michigan. They hope that the home they...

A report from Verify. "In the summer of 2021, the market started to slow down. However, Zillow Offers according to Mike DelPrete didn’t slow down with the market. 'What happened is they ended up buying a lot of houses and overpaying for a lot of those houses because they didn't see those brake...

A report from the Colorado Sun. "The collapse of Zillow Offers can be traced, in one small part, to its over eagerness to invest in Colorado’s red-hot real estate market. The company bought hundreds of homes in the Front Range this summer, mostly in August and September, often paying more than what...

A report from the Telegraph. "For some American homeowners, one number is the most important indicator of wealth in their life: the Zestimate. When they do not like what they see, things can turn ugly. 'F--- Zillow and their ‘zestimates’. This shouldn't even be legal,' one online commenter wrote...

A report from WPTV in Florida. "The large selling off of homes owned by Zillow is also happening on the Treasure Coast. As many as 20 homes in St. Lucie County are listed on the Zillow website. Earlier this week, 30 Zillow-owned homes were up for sale, some at prices less than what the company paid...

A weekend topic starting with the Gunnison Times in Colorado. "Despite a valleywide housing crisis that has hit both residents and local businesses, 41% of housing units in Gunnison County are considered vacant, according to 2020 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The high vacancy percentage is...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "In early October 2021, Zillow recorded its most active week buying homes in Phoenix. Then suddenly it stopped buying. John Wake, who has been a realtor around Phoenix since 2003, had one question: 'What the hell happened?' In Phoenix, nine in 10...

A report from Fox Business. "Zillow reached a deal to sell about 2,000 homes from its ill-fated house-flipping program. The company said it intends to sell roughly 9,800 homes it owns, plus another 8,200 it had been in the process of buying. The company expects to lose between 5% and 7% on these...

A report from WPTV on Florida. "Zillow is hanging a 'for sale' sign on as many as 30 homes in Palm Beach County. Along West Lake Drive in Lake Clarke Shores is a house for sale that has an interesting back story. 'This house just sold for $434,000 about a month ago. Zillow was the buyer, and they...

A report from the Denver Business Journal. "Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co., said companies in the iBuying space are essentially IT companies. 'In this market, it's been very hard to collect accurate information,' Vitner said. 'We also seem to be on the back side of the price...

A report from KTNV in Nevada. "Las Vegas realtor Daniel Mahabir said Zillow was active in Las Vegas. 'They very quickly, because of their platform, became the number two largest iBuyer out here in Las Vegas,' he said, 'and then this year, all of that blew up in their face.'" "Mahabir said as...

A report from IFR. "The speed of the turnaround is remarkable given Zillow had raised over US$1bn in the securitisation market in the last three months. 'Everyone is trying to figure out what's going on. I want to know if the repayment might be accelerated. Will I be protected? I’m not taking a...

A weekend topic starting with WFTS in Florida. "The current market has made it hard to predict how much a house would sell for, which is causing Zillow to lose money. The company currently owns at least 100 homes in the greater Tampa Bay area, that it's now trying to sell...quickly. 'People start...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "As of Oct. 24, Zillow had 250 homes on the market in metro Phoenix that were on average priced 6.2% below what the company had paid for them, according to Greg Hague, CEO of 72Sold. Of those 250 homes, 182 had price reductions averaging $41,000 per...