A dearth of contractors to renovate all these homes’ kitchens was clearly not the whole story. The COO called it “an operational backlog for renovations and closings” on the houses it had iBought and hoped to flip for a profit. Zillow announced in October that it was halting the program for the rest of this year, and at the time, the company said the problem was “a labor- and supply-constrained economy” that held up its ability to flip homes competitively in a hot market. Houses got very expensive, very quickly, during the pandemic. You may have noticed that the real estate market has changed a bit since then. It’s supposed to work for companies like Zillow, because the housing market is supposed to be somewhat predictable in the markets where iBuying happens. iBuying made up at least 1 percent of home sales in 18 markets in the third quarter of 2019, Redfin, another online real estate company, reported to the Times. The long inspection, appraisal, and closing processes in real estate do not apply. There are more formalities involved than just this, but the conceit of iBuying is that a company makes an offer for a home without even going out to visit it, based on what an algorithm, in this case Zillow’s Zestimate, says it should cost-and the seller accepts or declines. There are a handful of other companies in this game, and they tend to operate in markets where, as the New York Times explained, a lot of homes are relatively new and affordable and of similar sizes. The concept of “iBuying” has been closing in on the mainstream for a few years now-at least since 2018, when Zillow spun up “Zillow Offers” in Phoenix and Las Vegas before expanding eastward. (Zillow’s shareholders are also losing, which happens when companies release news of this kind on earnings calls with their investors.) On the other hand, I hope they try again? Or that another company does it better? The idea of selling houses like they’re something less complicated than houses is worth someone getting right, even if Zillow came nowhere close. Some execs dreamed up something they could not execute, it blew up spectacularly, and the most obvious people to suffer from their decision are the many employees they’ll fire. On the one hand, Zillow’s failure is a typical infuriating business story. Zillow still owns thousands of homes from its buying spree. The wind-down of the program, and the associated layoffs (about 2,000 out of 8,000 employees) will take a few quarters to wrap up.
![house flipper game houses house flipper game houses](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/house-flipper/images/c/cb/House11.jpg)
Zillow is laying off 25 percent of its workforce, it says, in what sounds like a direct result of losing $381 million flipping homes in three months. Zillow announced Tuesday it’s shutting that division down after it lost $381 million in the most recent quarter. Zillow, the website you visited to check out homes you could not afford during the first few months of the pandemic, tried something neat to help people get around that process (which worked!) and also make Zillow some money by flipping those homes (which did not). But the entire process is still a drag, involving lots of intermediaries and preparations and verifications that can and do stretch over several months.
![house flipper game houses house flipper game houses](https://wickedpixxel.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11-22-19_6-53-40-PM.png)
![house flipper game houses house flipper game houses](https://guides.gamepressure.com/house-flipper/gfx/word/273577237.jpg)
That is probably how it should be, given that homes are generally the most expensive things people will ever buy or sell. Like homes, as anyone who has ever tried to sell one would attest.