Earlier this month, the company shuttered its “Offers” division, laying off approximately 25 percent of its employees and taking an immediate financial “L” of about a half-billion dollars. Most wouldn’t get the chance to pass in protest. “Don’t Buy Zillow Homes!” digital decriers posted amid the offloading. By the summer, the company’s relationship to the real estate market was not one of control but a lack thereof the algorithm that informed its home-flipping business couldn’t account for the volatility of pricing during a public health crisis, leaving Zillow on the hook for thousands of homes it had overpaid for. The critique was a little off in Zillow’s case. In September, a viral TikTok video accused Zillow and other iBuyers, or tech companies who instantly buy and sell homes, of manipulating the housing market. “Z-Day is the new V-Day,” Zillow tweeted in response, adding a heart emoji.īut less than a year later, the internet’s fallen out of love with the Seattle-based real estate giant. You couldn’t have paid for a better plug. This property voyeurism was so common among quarantining couples that Saturday Night Live compared it to sex. Its stock price soared during shutdowns as millennials and boomers scrolled endlessly through home listings.
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Like many other tech companies, Zillow seemed like it was having an uncomfortably good pandemic. Image: Seattle Met Composite, J King on Unsplash, and Shutterstock by Karamysh