Hacker News Reader

I think Zillow saw the numbers going up in the housing market and got FOMO.

It's crazy to think an institution like this would get FOMO, but I think what happened is in 2020 they saw housing prices go through the roof, thought to themselves "hey we have all of this data, we can make a quick buck here" and piled in only to now get burned.

View on HN

They started ZO back in 2018. I think the bigger concern was the amount of growth and threat Opendoor presented them. There was a vision that they will fundamentally change the sector and make Zillow an equivalent of what the White Pages is to Google.

So yes it was FOMO, but not based on quickly appreciating real estate.

This is 100% it.

It makes sense there could have been internal shareholder/executive pressure to continue expanding into other aspects of housing markets to further entrench their positions against competitors, but hedging their bets backfired in some areas, and now is the retrospective time to cut their losses and refocus on their strengths.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com