Yes, they're profiting off of a bad situation, but they're not the cause of it. Bev from the local council's planning department, as well as Michael Caton's horrific propaganda piece, has done more damage than every flipper combined.
What I'm trying to bring attention to is that our generation is frustrated, we are priced out of owning a home unless we have some massive help from our parents or inheritance, and being repeatedly told that we will own nothing and it is for our own good is demoralizing.
There might be a sizeable portion of people who do have help from their family of putting down massive six figure deposits or are up on their luck from investments, but I still think it's important to bring attention to the housing crisis for those of us who haven't had the same sort of luck.
I don't disagree with you, and I'm in the same boat personally (young family currently renting, looks like we'll be able to afford a house but only because one of our businesses has taken off in a massive way).
I just feel like we as a generation, when expressing our frustration, obsess over who has what rather than the systemic obsctacles getting in the way of us gaining a stake in society.
Screaming at people who have more than us is cathartic, but ultimately achieves nothing. We need to refocus our efforts towards solutions that are achievable and impactful.
What crisis are you referring to?
No matter how you slice it, they were speculating on housing inflation.
Matt Levine's Money Stuff column covered this in detail. Incompetence, not villainy.
That seems like it was the idea but amusingly, per this article, not exactly the right word for what they were doing
Zillow was literally scalping housing, a basic human need that all people must buy. That's generally considered very immoral by most reasonable people. And they didn't just do it once or twice, they did it at ridiculous scale (tens of thousands of homes sold last quarter, was a sale to a scalper to artificially drive up all housing prices).
Most reasonable people would consider this behaviour to be evil (like, comic-book-villain level evil). Even scalping a optional-only luxury item like concert tickets or whatever is already considered unethical by most folks.
In this case, Zillow bought houses too high and sold them too low. As a result, the market punished that irrational behavior.
sorry, what were they doing?
Scalping may also refer to:
Scalping (trading), in trading securities and commodities either a fraudulent form of market manipulation or a legitimate form of arbitrage
Ticket resale, the resale of tickets to a public event such as a concert or sporting event
The arbitrage definition under "Scalping (trading)" (ie. making money off the bid/ask spread) doesn't seem very immoral to me. I don't think they were buying houses in an area, then recommending people to buy it, so it doesn't fall under the fraudulent definition. The "ticket resale" definition doesn't really fit, because zillow isn't really acquiring houses at below market value. They're buying houses from the same market as everyone else.
>a basic human need that all people must buy
you need to buy housing, not necessarily a house. They're not the same thing. You need to buy food to survive, but you don't necessarily to buy a farm.
>tens of thousands of homes sold last quarter, was a sale to a scalper to artificially drive up all housing prices
but the fact that they lost money suggests that they didn't drive up housing prices?
> Most reasonable people would consider this behaviour to be evil (like, comic-book-villain level evil).
This requires supporting evidence. Comic book villains do things like murdering half of all living things. Show me that study that says people think flipping houses is that bad.
I've met plenty of people who were flipping houses, and I'm pretty sure if most people thought it was on a par with comic book villainy, they would not just stand at a kids birthday party and talk about it.
For each property, they engage in two transactions for which all parties involved are willing participants. How is that immoral?