There are lessons in the US iBuyer Bubble Burst for the South African property market
By Gil Sperling, Co-CEO & Co-Founder: Flow
The US housing market suffered a seismic shock last week when leading property listings portal Zillow exited its iBuying business after a $1 billion loss over the course of three years – and there are lessons in the move for the South African market.
iBuying has been a growing trend over the course of the last three years, with companies like Zillow harnessing their knowledge of hundreds of millions of American homes and the areas in which they were situated and leveraging that data to make house flipping profitable at scale. iBuyers move quickly and offer home owners premium pricing, based on their predictions for the supply and state of the area – a real win for the owners in a globally-depressed economic climate.
It turns out that Zillow...