Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future.

I'm Henry Grabar, filling in this week for April.

Hey, everyone, welcome to If Then.

We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America.

We are recording this on the afternoon of Friday, June 14th. On today's show, we'll talk about Zillow's

plans to buy tens of thousands of houses. Then I'll talk to analyst Horace Dedew about the smaller

forms of transportation that are popping up in cities all over the U.S. and the world. Things

like scooters and bike share

programs that contribute to what Dead You calls micromobility. And as always, we'll end with Don't

Close My Tabs. Some of the best things I saw on the web this week. We're going to talk about Louisiana's

disappearing coastline. That's all coming up on if then. What the hell is going on with Zillow? Today we're

going to talk about how tech companies are trying to disrupt the housing market. It's a kind of a white

whale because it's a gigantic, gigantic industry where much money is exchanged every year and

everything is basically done as it was 40 years ago.

Zillow is trying to change that.

But first, you know Zillow, right?

It's the website of real estate listings where you go to fantasize about living in some other city

or stalk your colleagues and figure out how much they paid for their apartments or just look at, you know,

vacation homes, it might be nice to one day own if you win the lottery.

So Zillow has been doing that for about 10 years.

It is an advertiser-driven business model where they make money from brokers who are

trying to sell houses.

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