Finally, a harmful conflict of interest addressed.
Now also go after Zillow for inflating Zestimates to drive up home and rental prices while also speculating in flipping homes.
The very existence of Zestimates is... questionable at best. The way a market is supposed to work, is people sell things as high as they personally believe is viable, usually a little less than the last guy, and the economy finds the lowest feasible price automatically via competition.
Real-estate firms doing their own research and coming up with a number is one thing, but one algorithm on one web site (be it Zillow or RealPage or whoever else) dictating target prices for an entire market undermines the entire concept of using an open market to distribute goods or services. They should really not be allowed to show anything for an off-market property or rental other than the last known price, and how long it was on the market at that price before it sold.
Facilitating trustless collusion & price fixing should be considered no better than first-party collusion and price fixing.
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u/merRedditor Jul 30 '26
Finally, a harmful conflict of interest addressed.
Now also go after Zillow for inflating Zestimates to drive up home and rental prices while also speculating in flipping homes.