The human v. algorithm power dynamic here is pretty uneven. The prospect of getting an instant offer from these companies is probably a net-positive for folks who are facing serious financial hardship (e.g. from lost rental income that was paying their mortgage), but the same system that enables it also really encourages unethical algorithmic low-balling.
Will a Redfin/Zillow data scientist use new coronavirus cases / county in their pricing model? Should they?
People who rent out Airbnbs which aren’t their primary residence, especially if they took out a bunch of debt for it, are squeezing the housing supply and driving up costs, so I’m not gonna shed too many tears if they get screwed by the algorithm. Let them eat a huge loss as a warning to others so they’re wary to try it again.
Many locales already have them, including my city. Airbnbs are only legal if the owner lives on the property. This ensures Mom and Pop only, not over-leveraged speculators.
The CEO's comments seemed to indicate that the pricing was only to "build in some margin" for unexpected events, as opposed to "squeezing as much juice out as possible."
Having said that, publicly traded companies exist to maximize profit and if extra-lowballing property owners in the hardest hit areas maximizes profit, what should stop them?
> Will a Redfin/Zillow data scientist use new coronavirus cases / county in their pricing model? Should they?
Same answer as “should I pay more for my airline/hotel/car rental than the lowest they are willing to sell for”. I know my customers are taking into account the new demand curves, I don’t see why I wouldn’t, not others wouldn’t...unless they want to be on the wrong side of a mispriced transaction.
There are already people and companies lowballing offers, with Redfin and other algorithmic players joining the game, it actually increases prices and improves the liquidity of home ownership.
I live in an area with a large number of AirBnBs, specifically a beach town near Los Angeles. Me and a few friends were hoping to see a significant drop in home prices due to AirBnB landlords being forced the liquidate under financial duress.
Obviously we didn’t think this would undo decades of disastrous housing policy, but the hope is that some units would cross into striking range for those of us with good jobs. Alas, the price barely moved in my area, much to my surprise and frustration.
Keep watching. I'm doing the same in several markets waiting for the most distressed to start moving. Even if it doesn't happen, the cost is low versus the reward of a deal. I'm even reaching out directly to AirBnB hosts to offer my info when they're ready to do a transaction.
Haven’t made a lot of calls, but have had enough folks say yes it’s worth my time to continue outreach based on data mining.
I have a fairly mature financing operation from collateral I’ve grown over a decade and cash on hand, so I can move quick (48hr closing). I also make it worth the seller’s time with a shared equity model. I lock in my gain, they get a share of any upside in the future.
Less “We buy houses!” and more “you need a business partner with deeper pockets”.
Careful. It could go a lot lower. Millions and millions of boomers will be unloading homes too over the next few years.
RE has been in a bull market since around 2000. That bull run may be ending. It's even possible that the true bubble ended in 2008-2010 and what we have seen since then is a large bear rally a.k.a. "double top." RE is a very slow market where things that could happen in days or months in stocks take years.
RE in certain metro regions offering high incomes and multiple employers and popular vacation areas has been in a bull run market. Large swaths of the US has stagnated, and I predict the popular areas will continue to stay popular.
I don't expect those popular areas to get cheap, but I'm speaking of the historic RE bull run that began in 2000 that saw the rate of increase vastly outstripping core inflation and wages. That was clearly a bubble, and RE is still ridiculously high as a multiple of median wages in many "hot" markets. LA, SF, Seattle, etc. are almost totally unaffordable to anyone below 1-2 standard deviations above the median income, which is crazy. SF Bay is by far the craziest at least among major cities, though I suspect there may be crazier small "boutique" markets around.
Bubbles are basically naturally occurring Ponzi schemes. They are not driven by fundamentals.
A lot of that run is from systematic under building, especially where markets are hottest. Construction starts will be hit super hard again. Even the boomers exiting may not be enough to meet demand now.
There are systemic issues with regulatory capture in real estate, those who benefit from limited supply (landowners) have blocked land from being used more efficiently, dramatically driving up its prices.
The regulatory capture happens from landowners restricting both the number of dwelling units that are allowed under zoning, and by landowners using political planning process to stop even those dwelling units that fit the zoning.
Massive chunks of our cities are restricted to a single or two dwelling unit per parcel, which creates a huge bubble in land prices.
So in summary, landowners use law to inflate land values by restricting the number of dwelling units that are allowed. (And ironically, by unfairly capping the population density, they force overcrowding of people into existing units, which is what studies are finding to be the true factor the geographic distribution of COVID19 cases in places like NYC, rather than density... but I digress)
I've come to the view that local zoning should be abolished. We should have standardized zoning at at least the state level patterned after Japan. Local zoning is nothing more than a property owners' cartel that restricts supply to extract rent.
Critics will see this as un-democratic when in reality it's much more democratic. Most local zoning is controlled by tiny opaque cabals of land owners who use all kinds of tactics to prevent participation by anyone beyond other sympathetic land owners with a vested interest in raising prices.
These cartels have sat around while an entire generation has been ruined by their practices. It's time to take their little fiefdoms away.
Three books that dive into the problems of our "local control" system, including how it can be anti-democratic:
Neighborhood Defenders by Katherine Einstein et al
Segregation By Design by Jessica Trounstine (recently won a planning book of the year award)
And though it's not about loca control, as much, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is an essential for looking at the federal policies that forced segregation in housing.
I think we should keep the industrial vs. residential zoning, there is a baby in that bath water. But I largely agree, zoning laws to enforce density norms appear to do much more harm than they prevent.
I agree, but I don't think that any of the "end zoning" people mean to end industrial/residential zoning; at least I've never seen that aspect of it criticized. But it's also such a tiny proportion of zoning, that if it were kept and the rest of the bad zoning policies were removed, that "end zoning" would probably be a good way to describe that result.
> Most local zoning is controlled by tiny opaque cabals of land owners who use all kinds of tactics to prevent participation by anyone beyond other sympathetic land owners with a vested interest in raising prices
What tactics do they use and why would that not apply at the state level? We already saw huge influence of big interest groups at the state level for many decades now, e.g. with the most recent passage of the rent control legislation in CA (benefiting developers). State-level legislation results in a much more damage than any local legislation could.
On a different topic, I'm surprised people keep bringing up the notion that restrictive zoning benefits landowners. If anything, upzoning always increases land prices as it allows more economic value to be extracted from it (think how big the cash flow would be from a 20 unit apartment building developed on a 10000 sq ft lot compared do a duplex even assuming that per-unit rent goes down). I know plenty of landowners and landlords, and none of them favor restrictive zoning.
The only people supporting low-density zoning are homeowners living in these neighborhoods as they extract value from the neighborhood character and scenery and could not care less what they real estate is worth (until they are selling). These are not the people you whose voice in the matter of town governance you'd want to take away. That would be a textbook definition of tyranny of majority.
These views are those of an older homeowner that doesn't consider themselves a land owner, but as more of California becomes renters and are locked our of owning land by that cabal, the contradictions of these viewpoints will become increasingly untenable as their inherent unfairness continues to exploit people with less wealth.
For example:
> with the most recent passage of the rent control legislation in CA (benefiting developers).
This doesn't benefit or harm developers at all, it just limited the economic rents that wealthy people can extract from the less wealthy. Demonization of developers may be able to persist for a while, but landowners and homeowners are clearly the culprits of wealth inequality here and the developer blame game won't last much longer. For example, take a look at this recent NYT opinion article, which shows the sea-change of opinion about who is to blame for housing:
> If anything, upzoning always increases land prices as it allows more economic value to be extracted from it (think how big the cash flow would be from a 20 unit apartment building developed on a 10000 sq ft lot compared do a duplex even assuming that per-unit rent goes down).
That "always" is completely wrong, which is evidenced by basically everywhere else in the world that has enacted fairer zoning schemes and achieved far better housing results.
Upzoning only vastly increases land values where there has been massive downzoning, which creates massive market pressures in the few places that allow tiny amounts of upzoning. This combination of downzoning wealthy neighborhoods then doing targeted upzoning of lower income neighborhoods has resulted in massive destruction of the few places that were affordable. But policy makers are getting wise to the wealthy people saying NIMBY; future upzonings will increasingly require affordable housing in wealthy neighborhoods, or there will be massive city- or state-wide upzonings as in Oregon or Minneapolis.
The playbook of the wealthy white suburbs has been shown to be disastrous for society, and the next generation of planners, seeing an entire generation locked out of the chance at building homes, is increasingly rejecting the disastrous arguments you put forward. Society can not survive another 20 years of what has happened to housing, which is the disastrous effects of homeowners saying NIMBY to any newcomers. Exclusion of that sort is creating both economic inequality and massive societal disruption (except for the homevoters who directly benefit from this while slyly claiming that they don't care about property values, just about excluding any new people and preventing change.)
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, as the saying goes. Looking at fundamentals is not enough. Short and medium term price prediction is fundamentally an exercise in psychology.
>Me and a few friends were hoping to see a significant drop in home prices due to AirBnB landlords being forced the liquidate under financial duress.
>Alas, the price barely moved in my area, much to my surprise and frustration.
I suspect it's because foreclosure take a few months to do, and are probably suspended right now due to the lockdown, so those distressed houses haven't translated into supply yet.
That’s a great point, but I was mentally assuming that more AirBnB hosts would liquidate before that since they don’t actually live in their properties.
The only reason real estate works as an investment vehicle for people is because it's a slow market.
The inefficient pricing and the slowly updating pricing allows for the HIGHEST amount of leverage to work for people.
In any other market, unsophisticated investors would have been margin called overnight. Instead they get to sit for years on slowly moving prices, and use those years to continue boosting their collateral as if nothing happened.
So you can't expect a significant drop in home prices just yet. But definitely pay attention to foreclosure auctions. The court houses are not even processing these yet until the economy turns back on in the local municipality. You're too early, but wait for it.
For now we are all trying to quantify just how leveraged people were. Many people don't think there were that many AirBnB speculators to affect the housing market. So every article to the contrary just helps form the picture.
For the 2008 great financial crisis, it only took 7% of mortgage holders defaulting to cause the market convulsions (as in there really weren't that many "bad" borrowers, people overwhelmingly played by the expected rules to the best of their ability). Expect that the % necessary to cause distress to banks to be bit a higher these days, due to some marginal reforms, but also watch to see how many are going to default because that could also be a much higher percent its interesting because so many more people already won't be able to pay their mortgages because the unemployment already happened first.
Makes me wonder if companies flipping homes and other fast high tech financial types getting into RE will actually lower prices in the long run. Part of the thing keeping prices high is that people see RE as a no brainer safe asset where they can just dump money. A faster market would end that perception.
There are a lot of people that see real estate as a no brainer safe asset, but some of that is intrinsic in what real estate is. You can go inside your house and it keeps the rain out, which is nice.
I am more interested to see what happens to commercial real estate. I have a feeling that hotels are kind of unhappy about their real estate holdings right now. The question is whether they can get rid of it (and if someone can turn a hotel into apartments successfully, which sounds like a challenge to me). Ultimately, I think the status quo will prevail and nothing will change. The cost of change is too high.
> but some of that is intrinsic in what real estate is. You can go inside your house and it keeps the rain out, which is nice.
yeah and that remains true when real estate is exchanged for the amount of cash people have on hand, instead of how much cash they could theoretically produce in 30 years.
the game is trying to figure out how much of that intrinsic value is relevant right now, or how close is the current price to that 'intrinsic value' since they can be far far far away from each other. its just a commodity no matter how married you are to the asset class: if there is a glut of supply because people can't afford the mortgages or property taxes then prices go down. The banks and states don't care, they already earned what they wanted from the mortgage/property owner and are derisked. when you default they will get the property off their book as fast as possible.
More directly with commercial real estate, WeWork is almost certainly going belly up after Softbank pulled out of its bailout. It's the largest office space lessee in New York and I would imagine in most other US real estate markets as well; its implosion will not look pretty.
And combine that with the fact that, even the overall economy aside, at least certain types of companies will slow real estate growth. I certainly don't believe that lots of companies are going to go fully remote. But I do think, based on talking to people, that at least some level of WFH is becoming normed. And one result (depending upon what floor plan changes companies make) is that there may be fewer dedicated desk/offices.
many hotel operators have long divested out of that underlying risk. most large hotel chains own less than 30% of the real estate they operate out of. it's the smaller operators that will have a hard time.
>and if someone can turn a hotel into apartments successfully, which sounds like a challenge to me
It can be done, but I've more often seen apartments built over ground scraped clean than retrofitting an existing building. Honestly, hotels are probably the closest kind of building design that one could get that might be worth converting into apartments.
There are two buildings near downtown in my city. One was converted into studios, the other now bills itself as "student housing".
> The inefficient pricing and the slowly updating pricing allows for the HIGHEST amount of leverage to work for people.
> In any other market, unsophisticated investors would have been margin called overnight. Instead they get to sit for years on slowly moving prices, and use those years to continue boosting their collateral as if nothing happened.
This is a really interesting point. I've never thought of it this way.
The economy without credit/margin/leverage is unfathomable at this point and were it be that way for the past millennia, the size of the overall global economy would've been very very tiny fraction of today's, but arguably could've prevented most stress related diseases :).
The only reason real estate works as an investment vehicle for people is because it's a slow market.
Don't forget the tax incentives (at least from a US centric view). There aren't many investments where you can depreciate the basis for tax write-off, while also realizing gains in tangible value.
The 7% figure of bad subprime borrowers might be accurate, but, my understanding of what truly caused the market to melt down, is that the leverage that the financial companies used, to package these poor mortgages into other investment vehicles, and mark them as AAA investment quality, is what ultimately caused the financial crisis.
The leverage is why it only took 7% of borrowers not paying to bring down the whole system.
Banks were leveraged 40 to 1 and the value of their collateralized bonds fell a few percentage points, that's it. Yes, that is what our entire society is based around, the assurance that this doesn't happen.
Have hope, because the real estate market for many reasons is very laggy in it's indicators. It could take multiple months for the effects of all this to hit it.
I wouldn't expect that in 7-8 weeks that prices would be impacted appreciably. But maybe in 6-18 months. If you have a decent amount of people who over-extended themselves, they default on their mortgages, houses get foreclosed, and the banks resell them. Then prices might start coming done. But that process takes a long time.
The data on how much a property can generate is pretty open data. Most banks are willing to work with owners on re-fi, short term deferments and such and it's not rocket science to convert to full-time rental in lieu of STR. So investors will snap up anything of value and inventory that wasn't profible will just go back to market.
Right now people are just not paying bills. I'd guess that your dreams are unlikely -- banks and others will unload to different equity funds, who can use free Federal $$$ to buy up this stuff.
The second and third waves of the economic crisis will be worse, and I'm sure we'll see all sorts of cronyism pushing this stuff. We haven't seen anything yet.
Yeah I agree odds of consumers and regular people having access to the liquidation market are low. The favorite parties will scoop everything up with low interest loans
I'm a Canadian starting to look for a California retirement property and I'm hoping the same. This is the problem with most desireable real estate markets: there's always people on the sidelines waiting to come in.
Just want to offer perspective from the investor side: I own just one Airbnb in a hot market (downtown, hip neighborhood) and even though bookings were cancelled in April, they’re building back up for May and summer months. It was scary for sure for a span of several weeks, but there were always other contingencies before liquidating (like converting it to a long term rental).
Even if I went along with the panic, it would take probably three months to go through with any transaction that would throw a desirable property onto the market. The demand is still so strong that the low price would likely chum the waters and competitive bidding would drive the price up.
I think these Airbnb liquidation sale headlines are being sensational and end up wasting buyers time.
I take anecdotes about people booking travel plans with something of a grain of salt. For the right price, I might book something for the fall if the price were right AND it was fully cancelable. (Probably not if it involved paying up front though as there are too many things that could go wrong at this point.)
And to add a new perspective, over here in Europe we've also started thinking in terms of "if the second wave catches me in a different country while vacationing will I be able to come back in my home country more or less easily?"
The answer to that question has been a definite "no" for lots of people during this latest and recent first wave (which has now started retreating a little) and I suspect lots of people will think twice before vacationing in a different country (even if that second country it's also in the Schengen area).
Yes. That would make me far more hesitant to travel internationally than actual fear of catching the virus or just having trip plans messed up because of closures. It's vaguely possible I'll do it for business in the fall in the unlikely case that a particular event is held physically. At least, my expenses aren't an issue in that case. But I'm likely to stick to US and likely just driving.
That may be the case in your particular market, but there are plenty of international tourist hotspots that may not even have summer tourism this year. Open up Google Maps and zoom in to the eastern half of Mallorca: you'll see roughly 3 out of 4 of the homes there are "agroturismos." It's possible they won't see a single booking all summer.
Airlines currently are throwing incentives to cancel later vs earlier.
From airline's standpoint it's logical - as some states and countries lift the lockdown order the flights might actually take place on normal schedule. From traveler's standpoint it's also rational - I get a full refund if United cancels the flight, but "store credit" if I cancel the trip on my own. I also get the same United voucher whether I cancel the trip a month in advance or 48 hours in advance.
This affects any lodging reservation in a negative way, though - what looks like a steady supply of bookings months out turns into a series of cancellations closer to the dates of the stay.
>Airlines currently are throwing incentives to cancel later vs earlier.
An insightful comment, and it's exactly why I booked a vacation flight for late this year already. United in particular was offering very generous terms - they were offering book now, and no penalties or fees for changing the flight within the next 2 years.
I'm not booking any flights this year at the moment. The only thing that would make me fly is a couple of fall events--which I don't really expect to happen. But I'd consider booking something in the fall so long as I could fully cancel it.
you're almost certainly not in a vacation hotspot. in FL, many of the coastal counties have banned short term airbnb style renting indefinitely. miami dade and broward counties in FL are still uber locked down and won't even be considered for partial reopening until May 18.
It's going to be interesting what this does to housing prices in Florida, since they've already been pretty low for housing north of the Everglades due to all the available land
We have multiple short term rentals in Maui. We are planning for them to be vacant for at least six months. Yes people are still trying to book as others cancel, but this is how we are planning.
Honest question: this being the start of summer in the northern hemisphere, wouldn't the next six months be your slow time anyway? Or does tourism to Maui / Hawaii not fluctuate seasonally as much as I perceive?
Our peak season is mid December untill end of April. It doesn't fluctuate too much though, and summer is quite busy. September/October are the slowest months, but slowness is really just lower prices to some extent.
It is probably too early for the price drops. No one knows how much of a crisis this will end up being, so any price moves are likely to be slow. Most owners can sit out a season of no rents, and a few who cannot may get some mortgage relief or bailout to help them swim for a while. Not idea on how seasonal LA real estate market is, but if things are looking dim in late summer / fall you might find some bargains then. My 2c.
Same in south OC, too. Prices have plateaued but they've not really gone down. I am seeing an increase in supply over the last week, however, so it may be starting soon.
Keep hoping. Homeownership rates are very high in Republican country and the government will do almost anything to prop up home prices. Of course if they can find a policy that hurts the coastal homeowners while protecting the yeehaw homeowners they will but expect lots of money printing.
Interesting. I also live in a beach town near Los Angeles (Santa Monica), but I'm seeing prices hold as steady as ever, if not slightly up. That said, inventory here has been extremely tight for a while.
What is iBuying? It's not really explained in the article. I'm guessing it's where redfin acts as the agent and facilitates the sales online, but I'm not sure.
Given that my company is sort of waving in the direction of allowing permanent full time remote, buying a beach house at a discount sounds pretty appealing.
> Employers that were really stuck on whether to let people work from home have gotten completely unstuck. And if you can work for Goldman Sachs, but not in New York, if you can work for Amazon, but not in Seattle, well, why would you pay the premium?
Vacation rentals impact prices, but are a mere slice of the total market. If tastes and preferences shift away from expensive cities due to remote-work friendly policies, that will have a profound shift on not only housing, but automobiles, gas, etc. People certainly enjoy living in cities, but how many people live in cities exclusively for the physically proximate job access they provide? Time will tell.
I'm really curious to see how this actually pans out. As someone who enjoys remote work it's tempting to look at the situation today and say "finally! The fever has broken! Employers will realise how great remote work is!", but in reality a lot of the current remote working situations are a complete shitshow. I think we on HN feel it less because we're already a very tech-literate crowd, so remote video conferencing and collaborative editing (e.g. GitHub) is nothing new to us. But we're not normal in that regard.
I wonder if we'll see a sharp swing to the reverse once this pandemic is controlled (however that actually ends up looking). This experience might actually poison people's opinions of remote work in the longer term, not boost them. I hope to be wrong.
I've been number crunching the last few weeks for my next startup. I can't compete with big tech companies in salary but I can give the ability for them to relocate to where ever they really want to live. I've been really surprised how many conversations I've had with people interested in giving up huge salaries for the freedom to live where they want.
That isn't a new phenomenon though, surely? The idea of leaving SF etc. and working somewhere remote for a better life balance has been a discussion for some time now.
The tech companies aren't just in SF anymore. The salaries they pay in for example, Austin, are roughly the same. The living wage adjustment is kind of a joke.
A decade ago I could find senior engineers willing to come on for $70K/year. Now it's hard finding someone under $200K that isn't getting $100K+ in equity.
I think a large percentage of people live in cities for reasons other than work, whether they know it or not. I think a lot of them idealize living in small cities/rural areas because of space and lower cost of living, but they never actually tried it. I could probably save a lot of money by moving out of NYC, but I'd rather live in a place that gives me access to museums, restaurants, experiences, etc rather than saving money and going to the same 5-10 places over and over.
This is not what the post to which you're replying is advocating, quite the opposite. People in big cities get far more exposure to "the world" than outside of these centers, mostly because the world comes to them every day.
That may be true, but the world's definitely not coming to whatever small town you'd live in in Upstate NY moreso. Living in a city doesn't mean you never leave it any more than living in the country does.
Do you have any evidence of this? Almost everyone I know who travels to "see the world" lives in a major city, and almost everyone I know who lives in a smaller town hasn't even left the country in their lives.
There's something to be said for the sadness of not having the money to travel the world, but that doesn't seem particularly better for people out of cities in my experience.
>Almost everyone I know who travels to "see the world" lives in a major city, and almost everyone I know who lives in a smaller town hasn't even left the country in their lives.
And probably most of the people I know live in smaller towns outside of (many quite a way outside of) major cities or in/near smaller cities and many travel a great deal.
Yea, not to say it's not the case. We're both trading anecdotes here. I'm sure there's probably statistics for it though.
My assumption would be that the amount to which someone travels is fairly correlated to their income, adjusted for local cost of living? I'm not sure where that would be higher though.
There's a big difference between in major cities and near major cities. Certainly, not all that long ago, wealthier people mostly lived in suburbs though that's probably not as generally true today for coastal cities in particular. I tend to know more older people who mostly don't live in urban cores.
And importantly non-stop flights to more than a handful of destinations from those airports. Living near a major airport rather than a small regional airport can significantly cut the total travel time and cost even with the added inconveniences of large airports.
For me it's more about the time savings. If you live a short Uber from a major airport, you can hop from your doorstep to most of the continent in a half-day, then enjoy the second half of your day at your destination.
But if you're a 45 minute drive from a smaller airport, you've got to spend time dealing with parking, then padded layovers, and often by the time you get to your destination you're kinda wiped, so you end up burning a whole day of PTO just to move from point A to point B. Long-weekend trips aren't even really viable.
> No, generally airports associated with cities are not in the cities. SFO isn't even in San Francisco county.
Not being in the County of San Francisco is not a different or more significant fact than not being in the City of San Francisco, they are not merely geographically coextensive but the same entity, the City and County of San Francisco; which has a mayor as it's executive (like other CA cities) but, instead of a City Council, a Board of Supervisors (like other CA counties) as it's legislature.
Or access to arguably more important infrastructure: I live within walking distance of a major hospital, 2 grocery stores, my family doctor & dentist, all our schools and at least half my children's activities. a rural or even more suburban home would definitely mean longer trips by car for all those things.
honest question / thought - I wonder what the time difference is between you getting to the hospital in an emergency (heart attack / stroke) vs myself in my rural scenario. Your walking distance isn't going to matter at that point but traffic will. Or do the hospitals have a sort of emergency foot patrol than can be dispatched to you?
(I'm sure that sounds goofy, but it's a serious question/thought. I've never lived in an area that could be dubbed 'urban')
Most major cities will have multiple hospitals coordinating amongst a grid and EMT/fire stations that are localized as well. Depending on traffic you should be at the hospital in under 15. The hospitals may have specialties (head trauma, pediatrics, etc) that are in different city hospitals. These may not be available at all in smaller hospitals.
When I used to visit the countryside 1 hospital would serve an entire county or more. And if you couldn't be driven it was an expensive helicopter ride.
But, you have to take into account the differences in affordability across the city, especially in NYC.
Are people going to want to live in Tudor City if they only have to go to work 1-2x per week? Or do you get a bigger space in Brooklyn or Queens since the commute matters less.
NYC will always have desirable qualities, it always has, but if you look at the desirability of different areas of the city they have changed significantly over time, and could shift to include more distant areas that still have convenient access to the city (Newark, Poughkeepsie, etc.).
Before I had kids, I loved going to the office. I used to commute 1.5 hours each way to go to the office in San Francisco, because I loved being there and I loved ending my workday in San Francisco, which gave me the chance to take advantage of the cultural activities in San Francisco when I wanted to.
But I have kids now. I much prefer working from home, because it gives me the flexibility to go to their mid-day events, or be home in time for (future) after school activities, and just to see them more.
Even when my commute was only 12 minutes each way, I would still leave home at 9am and not be back until 7pm. I'd barely get to see the kids that way.
For me it's all about being able to see the kids more.
The point of the article is that corporate house buying is coming back strong, and much of this is centered around highly leveraged AirBNB properties. Redfin offers will be way under market (he states "more margin"), so owners are going to take a bath.
The real story here is that corporate buying will sink housing prices. Thanks to AirBNB.
I live in the city. Having a job in the city is just a bonus. And when I started professionally working I lived in the city and all my jobs were in suburban office parks. So commuting was never a concern because I never really faced the traffic. I love living in the city but not at the prices they were trying to charge.
I loved the idea of AirBnB when it was a niche player. The idea of staying in local neighborhoods was really appealing. But now, entire blocks have been converted to AirBnBs and the local neighborhood is just a bunch of tourists and the locals who hate them.
I worked for a company that was acquired that was based in Minnesota. The acquiring company absolutely could not find warm bodies in the bay area to do ... tech support. So they finally asked if the bumpkins in Minnesota could help out.
I traveled out there and everyone was very nice but I had things explained to me like I hadn't used a computer before, or couldn't follow a simple process. One of the directors asked me "What do people in Minnesota do for work?" I told him "Same as around here.", he found that hard to believe and told me about how is team were all high performers in college with fancy degrees and such.
Anyway a month later my team is out performing the valley team with higher customer service scores (funny that if you actually call your customers they like it, you can solve problems faster...) and so on. All with a smaller team and at ~2/3rds the price (possibly less).
I mean it was just tech support, on some fairly high end equipment. But still it was not rocket science.
A few years later to save costs ... they skip Minnesota try disastrously to offshore to India.
Then after the company is acquired again they take the opportunity to axe everyone in MN, and again ... can't find anyone to work in the bay...
I just don't know, these choices seem sort of institutionalized / culture oriented.
Once upon a time I brought a team of star struck developers to the Valley. I reminded them that the people there were not wearing capes and flying to work. They were developers just like any others. It helped settle their minds and funny enough the flyover country developers produced code on par or better than what came out of the Valley.
I live in Minnesota. My impression is that employee turnover is ~2-3x higher in coastal markets, which I'd expect to lead to (1) less willingness to obtain company-specific/business domain-specific expertise, (2) more fire drills/"we'll fix it later" syndrome as people leave at inopportune times, and (3) more resume-driven development, which in turn means more time spent working with unfamiliar and/or inappropriate frameworks. In terms of intelligence and coding ability there's probably about zero difference on average, but the environment here just seems more conducive to building quality stuff.
Ironically, a lot of the big employers around here still think dev salaries in Minnesota are too high and are increasingly squandering that advantage by bringing in contractors from H1B body shops instead of continuing to develop talent internally.
It's funny you mention it. When I went to visit the bay area folks I told them I'd been with the same employer for 10 years... they were a little shocked by that.
> A few years later to save costs ... they skip Minnesota try disastrously to offshore to India.
That's funny, because I was following along thinking your point was geographic region doesn't predict performance. Do you find it hard to believe it's possible to have an Indian team with who were high performers in college with fancy degrees and such?
Generally, I don't see any insurmountable impediment to outsourcing to India. I don't know of any reason they couldn't have outsourced successfully.
The experience I had there was a disaster... because of the company they chose to use to outsource just couldn't keep capable people on staff for more than a month or two. The folks who stayed, were just terrible / couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a box and IMO had some perverse incentives. I suspect there was an incentive revolving around "closed cases" and like all metrics that got abused and it was costly for everyone.
My email was filled with "please assign this case to duxup" cases that were in the hands of our outsource partners (and sometimes the bay area..) because folks recognized the case wasn't going anywhere fast.
The company even tried hiring folks locally at an office they had but again they couldn't keep anyone (probably again paying poorly) who was good very long.
I don't know the job market in India (then or now) but I suspect they simply weren't paying well / had a very poor partner outsourcing company.
I've had some visibility to various outsourcing efforts and every time it seems that the companies they partner with just don't provide much in the way of stable talent. I would assume it is possible to find a company who does, but I just haven't had that experience. I suspect that is more random chance than anything else.
Personally I suspect that most companies just decide, "We're outsourcing and we're going to save X amount!" and without knowing or caring they priced their way into poorly done outsourcing ... and only that. Interesting enough, I heard we hadn't saved much of any money long term with the outsourcing effort. Largely hiring just didn't keep up with sales and any savings in support costs there were attributed to outsourced support.
It was somewhat amusing as many of the Bay area staff were from India (they weren't H1Bs, they were citizens), and man nobody hated the the outsourced support more than those guys ;)
Thanks for clarifying. I was taken aback since your terse summary of the failure gave me the impression that the failure was because they outsourced to India, which runs counter to what I believed was your narrative core on the subject of geographic exceptionalism.
> Do you find it hard to believe it's possible to have an Indian team with who were high performers in college with fancy degrees and such?
Do you think that's what they were saying? Possibly you can apply an iota of charity and come with a couple of reasons why Minnesota and India are not fungible locations?
> I traveled out there and everyone was very nice but I had things explained to me like I hadn't used a computer before, or couldn't follow a simple process.
This sounds eerily similar to the experience of being a woman in the same kind of circles. It’s actually kind of heartening to see a pattern across different groups, though, since that helps me know it probably isn’t personal in either case :)
I don’t think the remote work culture will last. Remote work is fine when you already know what needs to be done. So it works well in task-based jobs. But in terms of deciding what needs to be done, and planning for the future, only the most exceptionally well-managed companies have managed to make remote work effective.
Remote work, as a percent of office workers, has been growing for years.
I live in a small mountain town where the majority of people bring their jobs with them when they moved here.
After working from home (and on workations) for seven years, I finally joined a coworking space. Coworking truly is the best of both worlds. And the ski resort if only a few minutes away.
Now, with the shutdowns, I have to work out of my beautiful affordable house. Dang.
If you have a job that can be remote, you should.
Cities and offices suck!
I think Apple's engineers could develop the next version of the Apple Watch remotely. But I don't think they could come up with the idea and designs for the original Apple Watch remotely.
As someone in a STR coastal hotspot, I generally agree with the sentiment here that it's too early for the average observer to ascertain a market correction...for vacation/STR areas, it's the rental market change that will precede the housing. (for example, many properties tyically churning $5-$20k/mo during peak season via STR are now renting M2M @75%ish off - and this is good for local communities IMO).
Online enablers like Redfin have perch from which to observe the market like no-other, hence the reason they can buy and sell in house with competitive technological advantage.
That said, I didn't see any data from the article to suggest what the CEO is purporting "home-buying demand is almost back to pre-pandemic levels." - so going to call BS on that full stop; he has every reason to say this esp. without a "reporter" who will challenge the statement or followup...read between the lines.
Also, these players restarting their own in-house buying programs are simply able to tweak their algorithms to low-ball and who can blame them? Does not indicate a healthy/positive market ahead either...just that they are going be hunting for deals via automated offers...again who can blame them? (Just don't interpret that move as meaning much of anything at this time).
TLDR; this is a marketing piece - give me evidence to support a claim or GTFO.
I believe it on home buying that there is a blip... March and April went down so much that the buyers who can’t delay any more are buying now. So three months of 66% reduced demand are combining for a month of normal demand.
In my city (Denver) where a lot of the Airbnb usage is event based (sports, conventions, concerts) I've noticed a rash of fully furnished rentals come on the market at just under market rates. These are clearly all former AirBnbs.
People are definitely having cashflow issues and I'm guessing many got their units through a ton of leverage and are now in a very bad spot.
Completely anecdotally, we were staying in an Airbnb for a week before shifting to a longer term rental. This was right when things were shutting down. Our Airbnb host told us that all their renters were cancelling for all their properties. They offered for us to stay essentially as long as we wanted for something like 50% of our rate. We unfortunately couldn't take advantage of that because of the aforementioned prior plans, but it was an interesting data point and would have saved a bunch.
I just looked around Berkeley craigslist yesterday. Tons of places available, month to month, that are mostly fully furnished and at high rents. A lot were nice cottage additions to houses. The rents are not dropping, yet, but it is clear that these were all AirBnB's.
I'm really not expecting to see a significant drop in home prices at least until close to the end of the year. While some vacation rentals owners might have listed their properties for sale they are doing it pricing those close to the current market value based on other properties for sale in their respective area.
We're looking for a vacation home and i'm monitoring the prices in a few areas pretty close, but i don't think we'll do anything until the start of 2021.
Remember you need surplus to drive price down.
Also keep in mind that the foreclosure process is currently on hold, once this opens again we'll be able to get a closer look at the impact all the closures had/have on the RE market.
In places like SF you might see more sales because people are afraid to rent these homes. They may never get any rent and it would be very hard to evict a tenant because of local laws and policy.
Also to keep in mind that RE markets are regional. SF/NYC for example are out of bounds when it comes to this. Question is what is the actual value for each property, they might be under 1M but it might just be that that's their actual value, just more ppl trying to sell now.
There are a decent amount of row houses that go for sale under $1m in sf proper. They aren’t in nice areas or worth buying except as investment/rental properties. I don’t see many people buying them. It’s mostly investors. Most single family homes I see with home owners moving in are closer to $2-3mil.
One thing to keep in mind is that SF is a very high-income/high-price metro. Whereas the stimulus and unemployment boost is not adjusted for cost-of-living.
Therefore we'd expect places like SF to see the least support from the stimulus.
Listing prices can be a bit deceiving. Usually real estate agents play with listing prices - to get a bidding war going, they'll price well below market price. It's not unusual to see overbids of 20-30%.
That's what my agent claimed when setting our asking price. We sure didn't see a bidding war. The benefits to the agent for a lower price is in conflict with what the homeowner wants. For example, a $10K diff in sale price is $350 for the listing agent, and $9650 for the homeowner. So of course agents will push for low prices to get a quick sale.
Of course, there are many times that a seller wants a quick sale (moving etc). But often it's in the seller's best interest to be a bit more patient and price it at market.
Yup. Sold our house in January using Redfin. Best realtor we've dealt with and saved 2%.
Also watch out for realtors saying you need upgrades and recommending contractors. They likely are getting a kickback, and by boosting the listing price their commission goes up. You end up with the same proceeds, IF it sells as fast, and you had to front the upgrades.
The incentive structure for realtors is whack. At a minimum, the commissions could be tiered instead of continuous.
I don't know your location, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, YMMV, but: In most locales, a kickback like you are describing is illegal and can be reported to your state's real estate commission. If you believe that your agent is acting in bad faith, you should at least find a different agent if not report them.
In many cases, smart upgrades can yield significant returns. Not all agents who recommend upgrades are trying to con you, many are providing market-aware prudent advise to help you maximize your return.
As an agent, I think it is good that tech and other competitive forces are entering the field. That said, commissions often get pointed to as a "problem." Here's the deal: If you believe your house will sell within a range of say, +/- $20K, then the agent's job is to try to get you to the top of that range. 2% in my market, for an average house works out to about $6K. If I can get you an extra $10K+ that you wouldn't have gotten by FSBO or similar, that's where I'm adding value as an agent and that's why commissions exist.
Commissions are a major reason why the market lacks liquidity. When someone buys a house, they're immediately 6% below market value, just from commissions.
To each their own.
Redfin was a fantastic experience for us. The advice was rational and unbiased (they get paid off of reviews, not commissions, if I recall my research correctly).
And the house sold, which is wonderful.
Also, kickbacks may be illegal, but that doesn't mean they're uncommon or that the laws would be enforced.
Former software developer turned real estate agent here, with this PSA: As an agent, I seek to inform you of market conditions and show you a range of pricing options based on that market. You as the seller always have and should always have the final say on the go to market price. If you believe your agent is not working in your best interests or is pressuring you in order to get a quick sale, find an agent with whom you can build the relationship you want.
In terms of pricing high or pricing low - there are a range of strategies and a good agent will describe your options relative to market conditions and the marketability of your home.
My own opinion: there are a lot of bad agents in the world, but a good agent really does earn their commission by understanding the market, how to present your house, will project manage a range of things that have to happen in every transaction, and will ultimately work to get you the best outcome possible. If you don't believe any of the above, I fully recommend you find a different agent.
Honestly, no offense, but that's a bit of a marketing fluffy non-answer to the problem that essentially says "it depends". A fair bit of what people want and need from an agent is trustworthy and reliable advice. Especially when it comes to the price and price-maximizing behavior. If one can't reliably find such an agent, then the problem will always persist. With that in mind, we need to get the agent's incentives such that they don't align with dodgy behavior on the part of the agent. They should not be aligning remotely to the agent getting paid with a non-optimal outcome for the buyer, which it currently does and so attracts dodgy individuals.
Yup, you understood me completely. Because it really does depend on your wants and needs as a seller.
In contemplating your message, I've come to realize that I cannot fully engage in this conversation via HN messages, so feel free to contact me directly if you want. There are a lot of agents that really care about this, as there are many who would say they too are worried that there are bad actors that bring down what is a surprisingly complex domain.
Let me ask this, as I think it's a really interesting thought exercise: how would we determine what was the optimal outcome for a buyer or seller?
Agreed. I've done a few real estate transactions using different agents. Bottomline -
1. There is no such thing as building relationship with agents and clients. It's purely a transactional encounter.
2. As you pointed out, the incentives are misaligned between Buyers/Sellers and their agents. Agents just want the deal done asap, add it to their resume, and move on.
3. Most agents are passive aggressive and dislike most of their clients except for the ones who don't have a clue and blindly trust their agents.
4. I really hope RE moves on to a more structured, online marketplace with consumer protection laws as a safetynet.
Obviously there are agents that are like this, but imagine this scenario:
-- You want to buy your first house, I sell you a house.
-- You have a couple kids and want a bigger house. I help you sell your house and buy a new house.
-- Your stock is doing well and you want a vacation house, I help you buy one.
-- You want an investment property to send the kids to college and/or pad your retirement fund. I help you buy one.
-- You are ready to retire and move someplace else, I help you sell your house and I refer you to an agent in the place you want to buy.
Thats's seven deals I can potentially help you with, if I take care of your needs and earn your trust and business. Compare to what happens if I don't do right by you and you go to a different agent - I get one deal, no referrals to your friends, no nice words from you I can put on my website, etc. So sure, there are agents that are purely transactional, but those agents are doing it all wrong - for you the client and for themselves too.
I just sold my house by owner (high end home) inside of a week for significantly higher than market comps. For anyone willing to do 20 hours of work and spend a grand or two, this will save tens of thousands of dollars.
I had a quick look at Edinburgh - which has 7000+ Airbnb properties and I the number of properties for sale doesn't look unusually high and there are still a few ~£1million pound two/three bedroom flats which seems a bit optimistic even the best of times!
I don't think there will be any real pressure for 3 to 6 months until the economy actually restarts properly and property transactions actually start happening again.
AirBnb landlords are going to first all flood back into the long-term rental market (yearly renewals). Many came from there but didn't do the math on maintenance so migrated to airbnb for "gold". Rents in long-term will drop due to unemployment / increasing supply, then many will become forced sellers. As these hit prices will drop and everyone else will be caught in this wave.
Furthermore, while it can probably be overstated, it wouldn't be surprising to see a fair number of people--perhaps mostly renters because they can pick up and leave more easily--who have second thoughts about city living. Why risk living in close quarters if this may be a recurring pattern and pay a premium for doing so.
Not so much the Bay Area but there are a lot of cities where you can get a lot more space for a lot less money by moving out to even a fairly close-in suburb.
Only time will tell for certain but the preemptive measures places like Seattle have taken appear to be paying dividends. Living in rural Texas is much more concerning than living in Seattle during COVID19.
As for space, cities have lacked space for as long as cities have existed but people continue to migrate for the opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if housing prices drop from short-term rentals reentering the market as single-family homes or long-term rentals.
>Living in rural Texas is much more concerning than living in Seattle during COVID19.
That may be true but living in a suburban/exurban area outside of the Seattle core might well be better than either for many. I'm not sure how many will ultimately make a change because of this though. It will depend on people's job/commuting situation and how diminished city living seems when lease renewal time comes around.
> Why risk living in close quarters if this may be a recurring pattern and pay a premium for doing so.
Your original assertion was renters will move because the city is unsafe during COVID and that suburan areas are worth the price to commute trade-off.
Two suburban areas around Seattle are Snohomish and Pierce counties. Those "safer" suburbs are doing an objectively worse job of following Washington State's "Stay at Home" order [1]. Prior to COVID, hospitals were closing in rural and exurban areas, which reduced capacity during this pandemic [2]. Disregarding SAH/SIP orders and reduced capacity sounds dangerous, not safer and worth saving money.
As for cost, when enough housing capacity was built in Seattle then the rent stabilized. After short-term rentals are converted back into single-family homes or long-term leases then rent should continue to stabilize or decrease. When I last looked, increasing my commute from 25m to over 1h was not worth the savings in rent and would have required purchasing a car.
It's great you prefer the suburbs and there are absolutely people the 'burbs are better suited. Unless you have a valid reason to suggest people are going to move in-mass from cities to the burbs then I find "diminished city living" mistaken and comical.
I don't live in a suburb and don't really like them. But I am in the orbit of a major city while being pretty rural. I don't really anticipate en-mass movement. A lot of the people already living in cities will just accept whatever restrictions and risk. But I do think some on the edge might reconsider living in places where you don't need to be in elevators or share transit with a lot of other people,
Some people will move away from a city and others will move to a city. It happens. Neither of us expects to see a sizable net movement from urban to "exurban" (rural) areas.
Why choose the exurbs where you pay a premium to drive long distances and live far away from opportunity and medical care? Plus, exurbs were some of the hardest hit during the '08 recession [1].
> But underlying today’s exurban fervor is an uncomfortable truth: The reason that homes in these communities are so affordable is that these areas were among the hardest-hit by the housing crisis and recession, and prices have only recently recovered.
Recessions are very difficult to predict. Maybe it will be some time before a reckoning in the exurbs comes due again.
It won't in real terms, unless the USA establishment really have lost their minds. Output is going to be down for a significant time, that feeds into land prices. Add in WFH from anywhere, and the next leg is down.
Many real estate investments are highly leveraged—-you need people renting your property to pay back the loan you used to buy the property.
If a family owns a vacation property outright and they’re going to miss out on some extra income then things are annoying but not terrible.
Those that bought in a leveraged scenario (and worse did so on multiple properties) are heading into a really bad situation and thus it’s understandable they’ll want to offload the property ASAP.
As someone looking for such a home, I definitely haven’t seen the market soften nearly close to what the doomsayers are predicting. Speaking with some owners, I think many of them are instead turning it into a long term rental for a year or more.
Hoarding shelter should be outlawed anyway. Or hotel licenses should be required with massive fines for evasion. Get a real job "hosts" (a disturbing doublespeak term for parasite).
The original evolution of couch surfing that Airbnb started with was still cool and I like to be able to let my apartment when out of town. It's the rent seeking behaviour that distorts the housing market.
If it's your primary residence that you live in for e.g. 80% of the year and you swap with other primary residences or actually stay in normal hotels when travelling, I can't see any distortion there.
Not trying to apologize for hosts or hotels in particular, I just feel like primary residence swapping is pretty harmless. Also, if hotel licenses are required, how is adding more hotels distorting the hotel market other than adding a tiny amount of fair and regulated competition?
How are they hoarding? Why call them parasites? More people still rent out houses for long term (as investments) than STR and really, with no data to back up your claims and attacking people for creating something others demand seems... misguided.
A lot of STR's are homes that have always been second homes or homes that would never have full occupancy in cities they occupy. They're homes that bring skiers to mountains, friends and family to beach, loved ones to touristy areas.
They create lots of revenue, jobs and the impact in their local economies is huge - from property managers to cleaning services to Lowes/Homedepot/Ikea spend to tax revenue (VRBO does collect occupancy tax where required) to working with cities for legal operations.
I'd say STR owners are just people who invested and make money through other means of hard work (and risk - such as now). The "disturbing" people are the ones like yourself who can't fathom there are millions of people who work in the STR travel industry either directly or indirectly and you seem to hate them. Most STR owners still hold their day jobs and just want to share their house (and the burden).
Vacation rentals still have demand. Many people would rather spend the lockdown in a nice house in nature somewhere than in their urban place. The problem is that at least in the US many states issues a ban on non-essential rentals, so they are illegal currently in many places. Once that's lifted many of these places would be fully booked. The rental places in urban areas that rely on tourists visiting cities are a different story.
Anecdotal, but I've been monitoring homes on Zillow for a while now hoping to find my first purchase. There's usually 2-3 dozen news ones within 5 miles of my current location that were listed in the last 14 days. I checked this morning and there are 200+, and that was after filtering out new constructions, apartments, and condos which I normally I don't do. I was a little shocked at how many there were. No change in prices, though. I'm assuming this is a bunch of owners wanting to sell before the market falls and their home is worth less.
Partially, yes. But real estate is also typically very seasonal for many regions. Spring is traditionally the peak selling season, so you'll see an increase in homes hitting the market this time of year.
I don't know about vacation towns but given expensive urban cites I expect to see large drops in prices. Given covid-19 and its mindset it no longer makes sense to live in densely crowded expensive metro areas anymore. With large tech companies finally waking up to the fact that remote work actually works expect to see a huge exodus of people from these expensive regions. With all the restaurants and museums closed and really no outside space they don't have much to offer except high taxes and crowds. Also if a engineer can get roughly the same pay but work where they can buy a house instead of have 3 roommates in a 5k a month apt. which would they choose?
Not really. Yes, if someone isn't in a dense urban environment, they're going to need to cook a lot of their meals. But, unless you're in a really rural location, there are supermarkets and at least some restaurants. In a lot of cases you can pickup orders at the door even if you can't get delivery.
A lot of people seem to think you're either in Manhattan or in the wilds of Idaho somewhere. There are plenty of places that are in orbit of a major city that aren't actually all that congested.
I've spent much of my stay at home where the nearest grocery store that had order ahead was 27 miles away and had a 5 day order ahead time (which was more or less expected).
Yes, a handful of restaurants have pickup orders but there are ~4 within a ~5 mile range, and they have the best food without going that 27 miles.
It's my perception (in part from the long order ahead times) that grocery and food delivery have gone up in areas that offer them and that modern urbanists that regularly cook at home (or even go to the grocery store only once a week) are a minority.
Oh, yes, I think delivery has gone up. Personally, I haven't used it (for food). I don't have decent restaurant delivery options--for my tastes. And the stock situation with supermarkets is sufficiently bad that I'd rather go myself and wing substitutions.
I have a couple nearby grocery pickup options (an hour outside a major city) but going into a store early on a weekday doesn't feel like a big problem where I live. Opinions may differ of course.
I’m skeptical of most of this. I live in NYC and I don’t plan to leave, nor do most of the people I know. The only exceptions are those who only planned to be here for a few years anyway. For everyone else, the assumption seems to be that NYC will be back to normal in 12-24 months.
>...the bifurcation of the American dream. It used to be that working-class folks could reasonably aspire to buy a house. ...So unemployment is going to be bad for one part of America...
Housing as institutional investment and institutional land speculation is a condensed example of why stocks can rise during an economic catastrophe, why housing will become yet more unaffordable and what drives increasing inequality between wage earners and asset owners.
Redfin's stock has been part of the record breaking rally during the pandemic because the drop in housing prices that would have kept them somewhat in sync with a drop in income will instead be at least partially absorbed by Redfin and other speculators and so make housing even more unaffordable. As we know, the model is to offer a desperate seller a low price then keep the unit empty until a new higher price is met. So a unit stays empty longer than necessary, prices are kept high by a seller that can afford to do so (ie Redfin) and profit is made from widespread economic hardship.
In particular the housing crisis is not due to bifurcation between wage earners, it's a simple perpetual shift upward in housing prices that affects everyone who works for a living. Portraying it as bifurcation obfuscates the cause of the problem by creating a conflict between wage earners with different incomes while portraying the speculator's actions a inevitable, natural and harmless. But housing is not expensive because some people earn what they are worth, it is expensive because housing is used as investment.
although i'm a home owner as of fairly recently, this feels like a bit of a necessary correction. people owning multiple homes drives up prices for everyone else.
It's too early for prices to reflect economic realities yet, especially since foreclosures are on hold and car auctions are on hold too.
Car prices and house prices haven't moved yet. House prices usually lag a bit behind because people have to miss a few payments and get over the emotional hurdles of losing their house before they start selling.
But it will come, unless we see a V shaped recovery, which is still possible with the money the Fed is printing.
> Despite the coronavirus outbreak causing a downturn in home sales and listing activity through March and April, Redfin managed to beat expectations with its first quarter earnings as the company posted a net loss of $60 million. A year ago, Redfin had reported a larger net loss of $67 million, for comparison.
The article appears to have been pulled. In any case it seems unlikely that vacation rentals are "toast". The drivers of their expansion, mainly our lack of ability to build anything in sufficient quantities nearly everywhere, aren't going away.
Will a Redfin/Zillow data scientist use new coronavirus cases / county in their pricing model? Should they?
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