Luxe Austin Homes - flipping

iBuyers, short-term rental owners could see divergence as investor activity plateaus in Q2

Posted by Grossman & Jones Group on August 24th, 2022

Investor activity began to plateau in the second quarter but even with higher interest rates and a slowing housing market, it's likely some groups will continue to find opportunity.

Real estate investors bought 87,500 U.S. homes in the second quarter, up 11% on a quarterly basis and 5.9% higher year over year, according to Seattle-based Redfin Corp. (Nasdaq: RDFN). Investors bought an all-time high of 93,700 homes in Q3 2021 but, as Redfin notes, investors continue to buy more homes than they did pre-pandemic.

Investors purchased a record $60.1 billion worth of real estate in Q2, and their market share was 19.4% of all homes purchased last quarter (down from 20.5% in Q1).

Defined by Redfin and most industry groups as an institution or…

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Zillow, facing big losses, quits flipping houses and will lay off a quarter of its staff.

Posted by Grossman & Jones Group on November 3rd, 2021

Zillow, the real estate website known for estimating house values, said on Tuesday that it would exit the business of rapidly buying and selling houses amid heavy losses and that it planned to let go about nearly 25 percent of its employees.

The announcement was a major strategic retreat and a black eye for Richard Barton, Zillow’s chief executive, who founded the company 16 years ago and has long talked about transitioning Zillow’s popular website into a marketplace. Last year, Mr. Barton predicted Zillow Offers, which made instant offers on homes in a practice known as iBuying, could generate $20 billion a year.

On Tuesday, Zillow, which said it has 8,000 employees, said the division had been the source of huge losses and had made the…

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