Is Zillow Going Belly Up? What Does the iBuyer Program Failure Mean?

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Zillow ditched their iBuyer program division and will fire 25% of it’s employees in the process.

So what does this say about Zillow, their algorithms and what might they see in the future of the housing market?

I’m Keith Walker, let’s have some discussion about what all of this means.

This moment cast a shadow on what had been a hot new trend in real estate for years and represented a rare stumble for one of the industry’s biggest names

But it also raised a big question: What happens next? 

Through it’s iBuyer program, Zillow currently has 7,000 properties in it’s portfolio to “unload”. That doesn’t take into account the homes they are currently under contract to buy which is claimed to be almost the same amount.

Zillow cites the fact that its algorithmic model for buying and selling homes doesn’t work as planned.

Rich Barton, Zillow CEO, stated … “we’ve determined the unpredictability in forecasting home prices far exceeds what we anticipated”