HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
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Data-Fed Disruption in Real Estate Four Horsemen of the Traditional Housing Industry Apocalypse
BY DAREN BLOMQUIST, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Zillow bought its first home last month.
The rapid ascent of so-called iBuyers over the past five years has forced Zillow to pivot from a core value its CEO proudly adhered to as recently as three years go. “We sell ads, not houses,” said CEO Spencer Rascoff in the company’s Q1 2015 earnings call. But in his prepared statement for the company’s
Q1 2018 earnings call, Rascoff spends seven paragraphs on how the company plans to start buying and selling houses with its version of the iBuyer business model, dubbed Instant Offers. “We purchase the home, do all the work a seller would do, and put it back on the market in short order,
The online real estate giant’s plain- vanilla purchase of a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Chandler, Arizona, for $410,000 is bursting with symbolism for the one-time housing market disrupter, itself now reacting to a new wave of disruption in the real estate industry.
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JUNE 2018 | ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS
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