How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M
The scary thing is that it's easy to see how something how like this could drive a market boom and bust cycle. I'm imagining a scenario where two iBuyer companies try to outbid each other algorithmically, driving the prices further and further out of reach of people who are looking for a primary home.<p>Tangentially related, I talked to a friend who works on geospatial data for one of the big vacation rental companies, and he was remarking how many homes in many desirable areas are now rentals. It's not that uncommon to see nearly entire neighborhoods converted to short term rentals now in some areas where they're still legal. Hearing that really depressed me.<p>We often talk about automation in terms of replacing various types of labor, but I've become really interested in automation creating adverse market incentives for smaller market participants because that's exactly what buying real estate right now feels like.<p>It's honestly quite scary how I'm in the top 2% of income earners in my generation and yet I could barely afford to buy a small place in a semi-desirable area.   I can easily see myself not being able to compete in algorithmically dominated markets flush with venture cash in the future and I earn more than just about everybody I know today.