Algorithmic home buying companies (or iBuyers) have now started to expand into Los Angeles. If you recall, most of these companies started in smaller markets where the homes are more homogenous, relatively inexpensive, and generally less liquid. Places like Phoenix. By tackling the second largest… Read More
There’s a lot of money at work right now trying to reinvent the way that homes are bought and sold. Perhaps the most popular trend is “instant buying” or algorithmic home buying. I have been writing about this for years, mostly because of Opendoor. But… Read More
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (US) created something known as Opportunity Zones. These are low-income and high-poverty census tracts that are designed to attract investment by offering a number of different tax benefits. I first wrote about it on the blog, here.… Read More
Bloomberg recently published a good summary of Zillow’s business and their move into algorithm home buying and flipping. (They are trying to avoid the “flipping” moniker because of the negative connotations associated with it.) Zillow started buying homes directly from owners last spring. They charge… Read More
Aaron Terrazas, who is a Senior Economist at Zillow, recently gave this presentation about the US and Virginia Beach housing markets. (I discovered it through City Observatory.) There are a bunch of interesting graphs/stats in the presentation. Home values in Virginia Beach, for example, have… Read More
In the US you can reduce your taxable income by deducting the mortgage interest you pay toward your principal residence. You can’t do this in Canada, at least not on the property where you live. However, there are limitations. It is capped at loans up… Read More
Bloomberg columnist Barry Ritholtz recently interviewed Richard Barton about his startup companies. Barton founded Expedia while he was an executive at Microsoft (Gates and Ballmer era) and then went on to cofound Zillow (real estate site) and Glassdoor (jobs site). I’ve been following the work… Read More
Last month Zillow.com launched a new feature called “Instant Offers.” Press real estate can be found here. It is: “…a way for homeowners to sell their homes quickly by providing them with offers from investors and a comparative market analysis (CMA) from a local real estate agent,… Read More
Zillow.com recently published some research where they looked at U.S. home prices broken down according to location: urban, suburban, and rural. Here’s what they found: As you can see, urban homes across the U.S. largely trailed their suburban counterparts in terms of absolute value up… Read More
Version One Ventures – which is an early-stage venture capital fund based in Vancouver – recently published a free handbook called, A Guide to Marketplaces. Online marketplaces are really fascinating because they are perhaps broader in scope than you might initially think. For example, Uber… Read More
