What it means for home sellers and buyers
Zillow jumped into the direct home buying space in 2018. The company joined a number of ibuying startups like Opendoor and Offerpad. But recently, the company announced it would shutter its Zillow Offers direct home buying division.
Buying and selling homes directly certainly seemed like a smart play for the company. Zillow has strong awareness among consumers, and a trove of homes sales data gleaned from public records, Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) and user-submitted information. These data are what make up the company’s ubiquitous Zestimates, its proprietary automated home valuation model. We can only assume these Zestimates were the primary data point being used when the company made an offer to purchase a home.
Sounds like a slam dunk for Zillow. So what went wrong? A couple of assumptions:
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