Did Zillow get high on its own supply?

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is our Wednesday episode when we niche down to a single topic, looking to expand our understanding of one particular technology trend or another. This week? iBuying. Zillow made a decision to get out of the iBuying market, with huge costs hanging over its head and a grip of layoffs to manage. Natasha and Alex were curious what went wrong. So we brought along Ryan Lawler, one of TechCrunch+'s reporting team, who has covered the space for a chat. Ryan helped us use Opendoor earnings as a comparison point -- it turns out that the iBuying model can work, even if Zillow itself struggled with the model. (Opendoor went public via a SPAC, recall.) We also talked about what the situation could mean for startups in the real estate market more broadly. It turns out that merely having data is not enough to make money in the housing space. Equity is back Friday morning with our weekly news roundup, and if all goes well, also back on Saturday with something both special and fun. And if you haven't given our sister podcast, Found, a listen, check it out! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines.
0:16.0	My name is Alex Wilhelm. I'm a reporter here at Tech Ranch and I am joined. As always by my friend Natasha Moskarenas.
0:21.0	Natasha, hello.
0:22.0	Hello, hello, coming at you live for the last time this year in San Francisco.
0:26.0	Yes, you are going to Jersey, I believe, for the rest of the year.
0:29.0	Yeah, next six weeks, catch me there.
0:31.0	Actually, no one catch me there.
0:32.0	I will be home with my parents. six weeks catch me there. Actually no one catch me there.
0:32.5	I'll be home with my parents.
0:35.0	I just want to point out that like,
0:36.2	it's like 38 degrees on the East Coast right now.
0:38.2	So you're leaving California and heading to the Tundra
0:40.9	which was an error.
0:42.0	Good. Can't see your flights, stay home.
0:45.0	Anyways, so we are talking about something very particular today.
0:47.5	This is of course our Wednesday show where we niche down to a single topic and drill in more deeply and we have been talking to
0:53.9	tasha quite a lot internally about what the hell happened with Zillow and
0:57.8	essentially you know there was a business model change there's a question of
1:01.2	competition quite a lot to unpack here, but first, for people
1:04.6	who don't get high and look at housing listings, what is Zillow?
1:08.6	Yeah, I mean my parents actually spent a lot of time looking at our neighborhood on Zillow.
1:13.2	It is basically a website where you can surf through homes near you
	...

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