Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Famous investor shorts Zillow stock big time.

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. ????‍♂️

  1. Where do a large percentage of people go when they want to “Buy” “Something”?

    Amazon has already built the most robust, Blockchian enabled, platform available. (Along with IBM). They now have access to Homes listed For Sale Nationwide.

    2+2=4
    #ZillowKiller

    PS – They are also licensed to act as a Mortgage Co.

    “Alexa, show me homes for sale in Newport Beach”

  2. @Eric – Amazon needs stuff to sell, first. Inventory.

    It needs a listing portal.

    Question is, which one would it want to buy? And until they do, they’re just posers.

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