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Zillow's Buying Spree Gone Wrong (LA 1630)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:Hello.
Steven Jack Butala:Welcome to the House Academy show, entertaining real estate investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the valley of the sun.
Steven Jack Butala:Today, Jill and I talk about Zillow's buying spree and how it's gone wrong.
Jill K DeWit:I feel bad.
Steven Jack Butala:I don't.
Jill K DeWit:I know.
Steven Jack Butala:I feel great.
Jill K DeWit:I know. It's true, but somebody's head's going to roll.
Steven Jack Butala:Zillow is pretty much a household word. It's a place to go look at what's for sale for all real estate types. It's a place to go get data. It's a place to post properties. If you buy, like us, buy and sell land. And it's been around for a while. I'll give all the stats here in the regular show, but they started in 2005. And as a tech company, are a huge example of success. And recently they decided to go buy a bunch of houses under the guise of, well, we have all the data, we're going to make better decisions and it totally backfired. And I've been on record saying that they're what's called an iBuyer, which is a... It accounts for 1% of all the acquisitions for SFRs in the country, which sounds like a lot, but it's not. I'll get into the numbers in a minute here.
Jill K DeWit:I have numbers too.
Steven Jack Butala:Oh, good.
Jill K DeWit:Just don't think that I can't come up with numbers.
Steven Jack Butala:Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community, it's free and don't forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel and comment on the shows you like.
Jill K DeWit:David wrote, hi, Jack. After Career Path, I've done six land deals that I probably would've walked away from if I didn't go through Career Path. So I want to say, thanks for that. I still haven't sent mail for land yet because my house flipping business has essentially doubled in volume. I range about 13 deals per month over the last four months. It's a lot.
Steven Jack Butala:So, I remember David during Career Path.
Jill K DeWit:That's a lot, that's great.
Steven Jack Butala:He's a franchisee of a very popular home company that advertises on 800 Number, where if you want to sell your house you can get an offer. And so what he's saying here is, Career Path really helped him with being a franchisee for this company. Just gets me thinking.
Jill K DeWit:So, just hadn't had the capacity to add another asset class yet. I actually went through the process of putting together and pricing mailer with concierge data and offers to owner. But my team's a bit overwhelmed right now. So, I'm holding off until they catch their breath. I've heard through the podcast that you and Jill have started doing a little more with House Academy. Right now, we're aiming to start that in the first quarter, after I'm completely out of X company.
Jill K DeWit:I actually think it would be a little easier to lift to add the land/house [inaudible 00:02:46] process to what we're doing in the flipping business. Now in a perfect world, my business would never rehab a house again, kudos to that. With that being said, are you still doing consulting calls? And where could we cover some of that? Or are you planning any additional training, like the intensives that you're doing or Career Path, that focus on houses? If some definitely interested, hope Paul as well. Thanks, David.
Steven Jack Butala:Next year, we're doing all that. We're releasing multiple Career Path scenarios because everybody wants it. And we will focus on houses with one of them. For sure.
Jill K DeWit:I agree.
Steven Jack Butala:Today's topic, Zillow's buying spree and how it's gone wrong. This is the meat of the show. Around 2005, Zillow was created by private investors. They raised up a bunch of capital through a company call...
