While the pause should help Zillow work through the backlog, it may lose business to competitors, including its main rival. The company borrowed $450 million in an August bond offering that was the first of its kind, and priced a second $700 million offering in September.įor now, the company plans to refer potential customers to traditional real estate agents. In recent months, Zillow has fended off online controversy and laid the groundwork to accelerate purchases.
While the companies ultimately benefited from the housing boom that started when early economic lockdowns lifted, it took Zillow several months to resume purchasing homes at its pre-pandemic pace. Zillow stopped buying homes in the early days of the pandemic, as did its main competitor, Opendoor Technologies Inc. It’s not the first time that the company has halted purchases. Pausing new acquisitions will allow the company to work through its backlog. “Given unexpected high demand, Zillow Offers has hit its capacity for buying homes for the remainder of the year,” an employee who works in the company’s home-buying operation in two states wrote in an email to a business partner that was viewed by Bloomberg. Staffing shortages have been exacerbated by Zillow’s willingness to let customers set a closing date months into the future, meaning it could agree to buy a house in August and begin renovating it in November. After it buys a property, contractors replace carpets and repaint interiors.įinding workers for those tasks has been challenging during a pandemic that has stretched labor across industries. Before Zillow signs a contract to buy a house, it sends an inspector to make sure the property doesn’t need costly repairs. The iBuying process is powered by algorithms and large pools of capital, but it’s also reliant on humans. With the pandemic setting off a housing frenzy marked by cash bids and fast closings, Zillow’s pitch of speed and convenience has started to resonate with consumers who want to sell their homes quickly as they try to buy a new property. If an owner accepts, Zillow buys the property, makes light repairs and puts it back on the market. In the new business, Zillow invites homeowners to request an offer on their house and uses algorithms to generate a price. In 2018, the company launched Zillow Offers, joining a small group of tech-enabled home-flippers known as iBuyers. Why Zillow Went From Online Real Estate Ads to Flipping Homesīut more recently, it has been buying and selling thousands of U.S. The popularity of the company’s apps and websites fuels profits in Zillow’s online marketing business. Zillow is best known for publishing real estate listings online and calculating estimated home values – called Zestimates – that let users keep track of how their home is worth. “We continue to process the purchase of homes from sellers who are already under contract, as quickly as possible.”
“We are beyond operational capacity in our Zillow Offers business and are not taking on additional contracts to purchase homes at this time,” a spokesperson for Zillow said in an email. Zillow, which acquired more than 3,800 homes in the second quarter, will stop pursuing new home purchases as it works through a backlog of properties already in its pipeline. homes after the online real estate giant’s pivot into tech-powered house-flipping hit a snag.
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