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How is this legal?? Seems like market manipulation
Pro
1. Zillow is not the platform. The platform is MLS.
2. There are literally dozens of companies posting “we buy your home for cash” fliers all over my neighborhood. They are doing the same thing as Zillow - buy a home, and resell for higher. This is the same as high-frequency traders in the stock market. It’s not illegal, and is not market manipulation.
3. Zillow is operating at a scale those others can not match, and they do it by having better data. Anyone can get a license for MLS access and do the same thing as Zillow. Anyone can build their own Zillow/Redfin experience and capture visitor data to better inform their buying and selling patterns. Another stock market example: how do you think Robin Hood and other brokerages make money off of free trades? It’s not market manipulation to use your proprietary knowledge of market trends to make deals in the market.
Pro
Are they actively making offers on homes listed for sale? Or is it sellers choosing to directly sell to them the same way you’d go to Carmax/Carvana to sell your car and avoid the usual hassels?
Pro
When literally every home on the open market is selling for 10-15% above asking I think it’s fair to say that the homes are being listed below market value. Zillow doesn’t have the capital to be doing it at enough scale to cause market distortion at even the LA regional scale let alone the national trends we’re seeing.