The Real Deal: The “Big Short” investor that bet against subprime has a new target: Zillow

“In “The Big Short” – the 2015 film about the financial crisis – actor Steve Carell plays a character based on noted short seller Steve Eisman, who made hundreds of millions of dollars betting against collateralized debt obligations laden with subprime residential mortgages.
In real life, Eisman is now a portfolio manager at the investment management firm Neuberger Berman, where today he’s shorting companies like Barclays and TD Bank.
But one of his largest short positions is in the Zillow Group, which Eisman believes has run out of new ideas to grow its stagnating home-listing business.”

Yikes! I enjoyed the movie and Steve Carell’s character but I have more confidence in the iBuyer model than he does. But one thing I think he gets right is that Zillow is kind of betting the farm on Zillow Offers. Mike DelPrete did a great presentation at Inman Connect and talked about Zillow slow growth of Premier Agent Revenue. They had to do something.

Time will tell. Looking at Zillow stock, which has sacrificed profits in favor of growth, is up from a year ago when it announced it original version its iBuyer model, while Realogy (a profitable company) is down since the announcement that it was partnering with Amazon. ????‍♂️