Zillow Shares Fall After Announcement to Buy up Homes

Shares fell 7% after the Real Estate platform, Zillow, announced that it will begin buying and selling homes in Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Zillow will be working with Berkshire Hathaway and Coldwell Banker to make offers on homes before a buyer is found. They will pay commissions and make all repairs and updates before getting the house back onto the market.

This comes as a change for the company that has been known mostly as an informational source for real estate properties, although Zillow says they have been testing this format for over a year.

CEO Spencer Rascoff said, “we’re ready to be an investor in our own marketplace.”, and that he believes Zillow has “huge advantages because we have access to this huge audience of sellers and huge audience of buyers.”

Others in the Real Estate community view this as just another attempt by Zillow to continue to take over the industry.
Do you think this development was inevitable, or is Zillow really going after the market of independent Realtors?

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