• watty@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      “That’s what one real-estate agent claims in a video that went viral on the social-media platform TikTok”

      Hardly a compelling source.

      " he’s suggesting that companies such as Zillow are using the data they glean from people’s perusal of home listings on their sites to make decisions about which houses to buy as iBuyers."

      Based on what exactly? Zillow used publicly available information about houses, just like everyone else does. Zillow traffic patterns had nothing to do with it and really wouldn’t even be useful for that. Buying decisions were based on home value and forecasted ability to resell, not derived interest based on page views.

      “Gotcher later argues that the company will buy 30 homes at one price, and then purchase a 31st home at a higher price. “What that just did is create a new comp,””

      False. Zillow literally excluded houses that it bought from its comps to avoid that bias. I know because I wrote that code.