Zillow Stops Buying Houses and Stock Tumbles

[Joe Splitrock]

What are your thoughts on Zillow pausing their house buying and flipping business over growing inventory? The stuck has tumbled over the last few months. I think they will clear the inventory and figure out how to make the business model work. I also thing Zillow is so much more than it's flipping business. Nobody aggregates real estate data like Zillow does. 

[Casey Powers]

In my market they've been paying $30k+ over the highest sold comps in the neighborhood, so that sellers would NET several thousand above the next highest sold comp for a model match house in the exact same complex. That's not a flipping business. More like a race to buy enough property to get a monopoly on the real estate market. Isn't that the SOP for every bigcorp? Operate at a loss until they own enough of a market to take control of it. What other purpose would they have for buying so much and overpaying so much? I assume if they are pausing, it's not because "flipping isn't working out". There has to be some other explanation.