Redfin: Vacation real-estate ‘toast’ as Airbnb owners rush to offload homes
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Remember you need surplus to drive price down. Also keep in mind that the foreclosure process is currently on hold, once this opens again we'll be able to get a closer look at the impact all the closures had/have on the RE market.
Therefore we'd expect places like SF to see the least support from the stimulus.
Of course, there are many times that a seller wants a quick sale (moving etc). But often it's in the seller's best interest to be a bit more patient and price it at market.
Also watch out for realtors saying you need upgrades and recommending contractors. They likely are getting a kickback, and by boosting the listing price their commission goes up. You end up with the same proceeds, IF it sells as fast, and you had to front the upgrades.
The incentive structure for realtors is whack. At a minimum, the commissions could be tiered instead of continuous.
In many cases, smart upgrades can yield significant returns. Not all agents who recommend upgrades are trying to con you, many are providing market-aware prudent advise to help you maximize your return.
As an agent, I think it is good that tech and other competitive forces are entering the field. That said, commissions often get pointed to as a "problem." Here's the deal: If you believe your house will sell within a range of say, +/- $20K, then the agent's job is to try to get you to the top of that range. 2% in my market, for an average house works out to about $6K. If I can get you an extra $10K+ that you wouldn't have gotten by FSBO or similar, that's where I'm adding value as an agent and that's why commissions exist.
To each their own.
Redfin was a fantastic experience for us. The advice was rational and unbiased (they get paid off of reviews, not commissions, if I recall my research correctly).
And the house sold, which is wonderful.
Also, kickbacks may be illegal, but that doesn't mean they're uncommon or that the laws would be enforced.
In terms of pricing high or pricing low - there are a range of strategies and a good agent will describe your options relative to market conditions and the marketability of your home.
My own opinion: there are a lot of bad agents in the world, but a good agent really does earn their commission by understanding the market, how to present your house, will project manage a range of things that have to happen in every transaction, and will ultimately work to get you the best outcome possible. If you don't believe any of the above, I fully recommend you find a different agent.
Yup, you understood me completely. Because it really does depend on your wants and needs as a seller.
In contemplating your message, I've come to realize that I cannot fully engage in this conversation via HN messages, so feel free to contact me directly if you want. There are a lot of agents that really care about this, as there are many who would say they too are worried that there are bad actors that bring down what is a surprisingly complex domain.
Let me ask this, as I think it's a really interesting thought exercise: how would we determine what was the optimal outcome for a buyer or seller?
1. There is no such thing as building relationship with agents and clients. It's purely a transactional encounter. 2. As you pointed out, the incentives are misaligned between Buyers/Sellers and their agents. Agents just want the deal done asap, add it to their resume, and move on. 3. Most agents are passive aggressive and dislike most of their clients except for the ones who don't have a clue and blindly trust their agents. 4. I really hope RE moves on to a more structured, online marketplace with consumer protection laws as a safetynet.
-- You want to buy your first house, I sell you a house. -- You have a couple kids and want a bigger house. I help you sell your house and buy a new house. -- Your stock is doing well and you want a vacation house, I help you buy one. -- You want an investment property to send the kids to college and/or pad your retirement fund. I help you buy one. -- You are ready to retire and move someplace else, I help you sell your house and I refer you to an agent in the place you want to buy.
Thats's seven deals I can potentially help you with, if I take care of your needs and earn your trust and business. Compare to what happens if I don't do right by you and you go to a different agent - I get one deal, no referrals to your friends, no nice words from you I can put on my website, etc. So sure, there are agents that are purely transactional, but those agents are doing it all wrong - for you the client and for themselves too.
Yep, even during a global pandemic San Francisco still has property selling, and many of them for over asking.
[1]https://thefrontsteps.com/2020/05/08/pandemic-pricing-or-jus...
I don't think there will be any real pressure for 3 to 6 months until the economy actually restarts properly and property transactions actually start happening again.
Not so much the Bay Area but there are a lot of cities where you can get a lot more space for a lot less money by moving out to even a fairly close-in suburb.
As for space, cities have lacked space for as long as cities have existed but people continue to migrate for the opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if housing prices drop from short-term rentals reentering the market as single-family homes or long-term rentals.
The decision is not so clear cut.
That may be true but living in a suburban/exurban area outside of the Seattle core might well be better than either for many. I'm not sure how many will ultimately make a change because of this though. It will depend on people's job/commuting situation and how diminished city living seems when lease renewal time comes around.
Your original assertion was renters will move because the city is unsafe during COVID and that suburan areas are worth the price to commute trade-off.
Two suburban areas around Seattle are Snohomish and Pierce counties. Those "safer" suburbs are doing an objectively worse job of following Washington State's "Stay at Home" order [1]. Prior to COVID, hospitals were closing in rural and exurban areas, which reduced capacity during this pandemic [2]. Disregarding SAH/SIP orders and reduced capacity sounds dangerous, not safer and worth saving money.
As for cost, when enough housing capacity was built in Seattle then the rent stabilized. After short-term rentals are converted back into single-family homes or long-term leases then rent should continue to stabilize or decrease. When I last looked, increasing my commute from 25m to over 1h was not worth the savings in rent and would have required purchasing a car.
It's great you prefer the suburbs and there are absolutely people the 'burbs are better suited. Unless you have a valid reason to suggest people are going to move in-mass from cities to the burbs then I find "diminished city living" mistaken and comical.
[1] https://www.unacast.com/covid19/social-distancing-scoreboard... [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/04/09/829753752/small-town-hospital...
Why choose the exurbs where you pay a premium to drive long distances and live far away from opportunity and medical care? Plus, exurbs were some of the hardest hit during the '08 recession [1].
> But underlying today’s exurban fervor is an uncomfortable truth: The reason that homes in these communities are so affordable is that these areas were among the hardest-hit by the housing crisis and recession, and prices have only recently recovered.
Recessions are very difficult to predict. Maybe it will be some time before a reckoning in the exurbs comes due again.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/it-can-be-risky-to-buy-a-h...
The amount of land stays fixed while the amount of money changes. Other products can change their supply but land stays fixed.
It's reasonable to believe that land will become relatively more expensive imo. Looks like it's not a guarantee though https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2018/05/03/once-the-safest...
fwiw I hope land prices plummet here they are already insane https://wolfstreet.com/2019/07/12/changes-in-house-prices-re...
Obviously we didn’t think this would undo decades of disastrous housing policy, but the hope is that some units would cross into striking range for those of us with good jobs. Alas, the price barely moved in my area, much to my surprise and frustration.
I have a fairly mature financing operation from collateral I’ve grown over a decade and cash on hand, so I can move quick (48hr closing). I also make it worth the seller’s time with a shared equity model. I lock in my gain, they get a share of any upside in the future.
Less “We buy houses!” and more “you need a business partner with deeper pockets”.
RE has been in a bull market since around 2000. That bull run may be ending. It's even possible that the true bubble ended in 2008-2010 and what we have seen since then is a large bear rally a.k.a. "double top." RE is a very slow market where things that could happen in days or months in stocks take years.
Bubbles are basically naturally occurring Ponzi schemes. They are not driven by fundamentals.
There are systemic issues with regulatory capture in real estate, those who benefit from limited supply (landowners) have blocked land from being used more efficiently, dramatically driving up its prices.
Replace “land” with “dwelling unit” and I might agree with you.
Massive chunks of our cities are restricted to a single or two dwelling unit per parcel, which creates a huge bubble in land prices.
So in summary, landowners use law to inflate land values by restricting the number of dwelling units that are allowed. (And ironically, by unfairly capping the population density, they force overcrowding of people into existing units, which is what studies are finding to be the true factor the geographic distribution of COVID19 cases in places like NYC, rather than density... but I digress)
Critics will see this as un-democratic when in reality it's much more democratic. Most local zoning is controlled by tiny opaque cabals of land owners who use all kinds of tactics to prevent participation by anyone beyond other sympathetic land owners with a vested interest in raising prices.
These cartels have sat around while an entire generation has been ruined by their practices. It's time to take their little fiefdoms away.
Neighborhood Defenders by Katherine Einstein et al
Segregation By Design by Jessica Trounstine (recently won a planning book of the year award)
And though it's not about loca control, as much, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is an essential for looking at the federal policies that forced segregation in housing.
What tactics do they use and why would that not apply at the state level? We already saw huge influence of big interest groups at the state level for many decades now, e.g. with the most recent passage of the rent control legislation in CA (benefiting developers). State-level legislation results in a much more damage than any local legislation could.
On a different topic, I'm surprised people keep bringing up the notion that restrictive zoning benefits landowners. If anything, upzoning always increases land prices as it allows more economic value to be extracted from it (think how big the cash flow would be from a 20 unit apartment building developed on a 10000 sq ft lot compared do a duplex even assuming that per-unit rent goes down). I know plenty of landowners and landlords, and none of them favor restrictive zoning.
The only people supporting low-density zoning are homeowners living in these neighborhoods as they extract value from the neighborhood character and scenery and could not care less what they real estate is worth (until they are selling). These are not the people you whose voice in the matter of town governance you'd want to take away. That would be a textbook definition of tyranny of majority.
For example:
> with the most recent passage of the rent control legislation in CA (benefiting developers).
This doesn't benefit or harm developers at all, it just limited the economic rents that wealthy people can extract from the less wealthy. Demonization of developers may be able to persist for a while, but landowners and homeowners are clearly the culprits of wealth inequality here and the developer blame game won't last much longer. For example, take a look at this recent NYT opinion article, which shows the sea-change of opinion about who is to blame for housing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/opinion/coronavirus-us-ci...
> If anything, upzoning always increases land prices as it allows more economic value to be extracted from it (think how big the cash flow would be from a 20 unit apartment building developed on a 10000 sq ft lot compared do a duplex even assuming that per-unit rent goes down).
That "always" is completely wrong, which is evidenced by basically everywhere else in the world that has enacted fairer zoning schemes and achieved far better housing results.
Upzoning only vastly increases land values where there has been massive downzoning, which creates massive market pressures in the few places that allow tiny amounts of upzoning. This combination of downzoning wealthy neighborhoods then doing targeted upzoning of lower income neighborhoods has resulted in massive destruction of the few places that were affordable. But policy makers are getting wise to the wealthy people saying NIMBY; future upzonings will increasingly require affordable housing in wealthy neighborhoods, or there will be massive city- or state-wide upzonings as in Oregon or Minneapolis.
The playbook of the wealthy white suburbs has been shown to be disastrous for society, and the next generation of planners, seeing an entire generation locked out of the chance at building homes, is increasingly rejecting the disastrous arguments you put forward. Society can not survive another 20 years of what has happened to housing, which is the disastrous effects of homeowners saying NIMBY to any newcomers. Exclusion of that sort is creating both economic inequality and massive societal disruption (except for the homevoters who directly benefit from this while slyly claiming that they don't care about property values, just about excluding any new people and preventing change.)
This might be true in some markets. In the LA market, my friends who were using the "wait a few years" strategy have been very, very disappointed.
>Alas, the price barely moved in my area, much to my surprise and frustration.
I suspect it's because foreclosure take a few months to do, and are probably suspended right now due to the lockdown, so those distressed houses haven't translated into supply yet.
The inefficient pricing and the slowly updating pricing allows for the HIGHEST amount of leverage to work for people.
In any other market, unsophisticated investors would have been margin called overnight. Instead they get to sit for years on slowly moving prices, and use those years to continue boosting their collateral as if nothing happened.
So you can't expect a significant drop in home prices just yet. But definitely pay attention to foreclosure auctions. The court houses are not even processing these yet until the economy turns back on in the local municipality. You're too early, but wait for it.
For now we are all trying to quantify just how leveraged people were. Many people don't think there were that many AirBnB speculators to affect the housing market. So every article to the contrary just helps form the picture.
For the 2008 great financial crisis, it only took 7% of mortgage holders defaulting to cause the market convulsions (as in there really weren't that many "bad" borrowers, people overwhelmingly played by the expected rules to the best of their ability). Expect that the % necessary to cause distress to banks to be bit a higher these days, due to some marginal reforms, but also watch to see how many are going to default because that could also be a much higher percent its interesting because so many more people already won't be able to pay their mortgages because the unemployment already happened first.
I am more interested to see what happens to commercial real estate. I have a feeling that hotels are kind of unhappy about their real estate holdings right now. The question is whether they can get rid of it (and if someone can turn a hotel into apartments successfully, which sounds like a challenge to me). Ultimately, I think the status quo will prevail and nothing will change. The cost of change is too high.
yeah and that remains true when real estate is exchanged for the amount of cash people have on hand, instead of how much cash they could theoretically produce in 30 years.
the game is trying to figure out how much of that intrinsic value is relevant right now, or how close is the current price to that 'intrinsic value' since they can be far far far away from each other. its just a commodity no matter how married you are to the asset class: if there is a glut of supply because people can't afford the mortgages or property taxes then prices go down. The banks and states don't care, they already earned what they wanted from the mortgage/property owner and are derisked. when you default they will get the property off their book as fast as possible.
It can be done, but I've more often seen apartments built over ground scraped clean than retrofitting an existing building. Honestly, hotels are probably the closest kind of building design that one could get that might be worth converting into apartments.
There are two buildings near downtown in my city. One was converted into studios, the other now bills itself as "student housing".
> In any other market, unsophisticated investors would have been margin called overnight. Instead they get to sit for years on slowly moving prices, and use those years to continue boosting their collateral as if nothing happened.
This is a really interesting point. I've never thought of it this way.
Don't forget the tax incentives (at least from a US centric view). There aren't many investments where you can depreciate the basis for tax write-off, while also realizing gains in tangible value.
Aka: shenanigans of the financial industry
Banks were leveraged 40 to 1 and the value of their collateralized bonds fell a few percentage points, that's it. Yes, that is what our entire society is based around, the assurance that this doesn't happen.
The second and third waves of the economic crisis will be worse, and I'm sure we'll see all sorts of cronyism pushing this stuff. We haven't seen anything yet.
You are early. Banks aren't becoming aggressive quite yet.
Even if I went along with the panic, it would take probably three months to go through with any transaction that would throw a desirable property onto the market. The demand is still so strong that the low price would likely chum the waters and competitive bidding would drive the price up.
I think these Airbnb liquidation sale headlines are being sensational and end up wasting buyers time.
The answer to that question has been a definite "no" for lots of people during this latest and recent first wave (which has now started retreating a little) and I suspect lots of people will think twice before vacationing in a different country (even if that second country it's also in the Schengen area).
From airline's standpoint it's logical - as some states and countries lift the lockdown order the flights might actually take place on normal schedule. From traveler's standpoint it's also rational - I get a full refund if United cancels the flight, but "store credit" if I cancel the trip on my own. I also get the same United voucher whether I cancel the trip a month in advance or 48 hours in advance.
This affects any lodging reservation in a negative way, though - what looks like a steady supply of bookings months out turns into a series of cancellations closer to the dates of the stay.
An insightful comment, and it's exactly why I booked a vacation flight for late this year already. United in particular was offering very generous terms - they were offering book now, and no penalties or fees for changing the flight within the next 2 years.
> Employers that were really stuck on whether to let people work from home have gotten completely unstuck. And if you can work for Goldman Sachs, but not in New York, if you can work for Amazon, but not in Seattle, well, why would you pay the premium?
Vacation rentals impact prices, but are a mere slice of the total market. If tastes and preferences shift away from expensive cities due to remote-work friendly policies, that will have a profound shift on not only housing, but automobiles, gas, etc. People certainly enjoy living in cities, but how many people live in cities exclusively for the physically proximate job access they provide? Time will tell.
I wonder if we'll see a sharp swing to the reverse once this pandemic is controlled (however that actually ends up looking). This experience might actually poison people's opinions of remote work in the longer term, not boost them. I hope to be wrong.
There's something to be said for the sadness of not having the money to travel the world, but that doesn't seem particularly better for people out of cities in my experience.
And probably most of the people I know live in smaller towns outside of (many quite a way outside of) major cities or in/near smaller cities and many travel a great deal.
My assumption would be that the amount to which someone travels is fairly correlated to their income, adjusted for local cost of living? I'm not sure where that would be higher though.
I can't get the land in city at affordable price.
But if you're a 45 minute drive from a smaller airport, you've got to spend time dealing with parking, then padded layovers, and often by the time you get to your destination you're kinda wiped, so you end up burning a whole day of PTO just to move from point A to point B. Long-weekend trips aren't even really viable.
Not being in the County of San Francisco is not a different or more significant fact than not being in the City of San Francisco, they are not merely geographically coextensive but the same entity, the City and County of San Francisco; which has a mayor as it's executive (like other CA cities) but, instead of a City Council, a Board of Supervisors (like other CA counties) as it's legislature.
(I'm sure that sounds goofy, but it's a serious question/thought. I've never lived in an area that could be dubbed 'urban')
When I used to visit the countryside 1 hospital would serve an entire county or more. And if you couldn't be driven it was an expensive helicopter ride.
Are people going to want to live in Tudor City if they only have to go to work 1-2x per week? Or do you get a bigger space in Brooklyn or Queens since the commute matters less.
NYC will always have desirable qualities, it always has, but if you look at the desirability of different areas of the city they have changed significantly over time, and could shift to include more distant areas that still have convenient access to the city (Newark, Poughkeepsie, etc.).
That said, there is probably enough pent up demand of people who really want it, for numbers to go up substantially from here.
But I have kids now. I much prefer working from home, because it gives me the flexibility to go to their mid-day events, or be home in time for (future) after school activities, and just to see them more.
Even when my commute was only 12 minutes each way, I would still leave home at 9am and not be back until 7pm. I'd barely get to see the kids that way.
For me it's all about being able to see the kids more.
I also get more and better work done around people than home alone.
The real story here is that corporate buying will sink housing prices. Thanks to AirBNB.
It's not about remote work.
I loved the idea of AirBnB when it was a niche player. The idea of staying in local neighborhoods was really appealing. But now, entire blocks have been converted to AirBnBs and the local neighborhood is just a bunch of tourists and the locals who hate them.
I worked for a company that was acquired that was based in Minnesota. The acquiring company absolutely could not find warm bodies in the bay area to do ... tech support. So they finally asked if the bumpkins in Minnesota could help out.
I traveled out there and everyone was very nice but I had things explained to me like I hadn't used a computer before, or couldn't follow a simple process. One of the directors asked me "What do people in Minnesota do for work?" I told him "Same as around here.", he found that hard to believe and told me about how is team were all high performers in college with fancy degrees and such.
Anyway a month later my team is out performing the valley team with higher customer service scores (funny that if you actually call your customers they like it, you can solve problems faster...) and so on. All with a smaller team and at ~2/3rds the price (possibly less).
I mean it was just tech support, on some fairly high end equipment. But still it was not rocket science.
A few years later to save costs ... they skip Minnesota try disastrously to offshore to India.
Then after the company is acquired again they take the opportunity to axe everyone in MN, and again ... can't find anyone to work in the bay...
I just don't know, these choices seem sort of institutionalized / culture oriented.
What would you attribute this to?
Ironically, a lot of the big employers around here still think dev salaries in Minnesota are too high and are increasingly squandering that advantage by bringing in contractors from H1B body shops instead of continuing to develop talent internally.
That's funny, because I was following along thinking your point was geographic region doesn't predict performance. Do you find it hard to believe it's possible to have an Indian team with who were high performers in college with fancy degrees and such?
The experience I had there was a disaster... because of the company they chose to use to outsource just couldn't keep capable people on staff for more than a month or two. The folks who stayed, were just terrible / couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a box and IMO had some perverse incentives. I suspect there was an incentive revolving around "closed cases" and like all metrics that got abused and it was costly for everyone.
My email was filled with "please assign this case to duxup" cases that were in the hands of our outsource partners (and sometimes the bay area..) because folks recognized the case wasn't going anywhere fast.
The company even tried hiring folks locally at an office they had but again they couldn't keep anyone (probably again paying poorly) who was good very long.
I don't know the job market in India (then or now) but I suspect they simply weren't paying well / had a very poor partner outsourcing company.
I've had some visibility to various outsourcing efforts and every time it seems that the companies they partner with just don't provide much in the way of stable talent. I would assume it is possible to find a company who does, but I just haven't had that experience. I suspect that is more random chance than anything else.
Personally I suspect that most companies just decide, "We're outsourcing and we're going to save X amount!" and without knowing or caring they priced their way into poorly done outsourcing ... and only that. Interesting enough, I heard we hadn't saved much of any money long term with the outsourcing effort. Largely hiring just didn't keep up with sales and any savings in support costs there were attributed to outsourced support.
It was somewhat amusing as many of the Bay area staff were from India (they weren't H1Bs, they were citizens), and man nobody hated the the outsourced support more than those guys ;)
Do you think that's what they were saying? Possibly you can apply an iota of charity and come with a couple of reasons why Minnesota and India are not fungible locations?
This sounds eerily similar to the experience of being a woman in the same kind of circles. It’s actually kind of heartening to see a pattern across different groups, though, since that helps me know it probably isn’t personal in either case :)
I live in a small mountain town where the majority of people bring their jobs with them when they moved here.
After working from home (and on workations) for seven years, I finally joined a coworking space. Coworking truly is the best of both worlds. And the ski resort if only a few minutes away.
Now, with the shutdowns, I have to work out of my beautiful affordable house. Dang.
If you have a job that can be remote, you should. Cities and offices suck!
Housing as institutional investment and institutional land speculation is a condensed example of why stocks can rise during an economic catastrophe, why housing will become yet more unaffordable and what drives increasing inequality between wage earners and asset owners.
Redfin's stock has been part of the record breaking rally during the pandemic because the drop in housing prices that would have kept them somewhat in sync with a drop in income will instead be at least partially absorbed by Redfin and other speculators and so make housing even more unaffordable. As we know, the model is to offer a desperate seller a low price then keep the unit empty until a new higher price is met. So a unit stays empty longer than necessary, prices are kept high by a seller that can afford to do so (ie Redfin) and profit is made from widespread economic hardship.
In particular the housing crisis is not due to bifurcation between wage earners, it's a simple perpetual shift upward in housing prices that affects everyone who works for a living. Portraying it as bifurcation obfuscates the cause of the problem by creating a conflict between wage earners with different incomes while portraying the speculator's actions a inevitable, natural and harmless. But housing is not expensive because some people earn what they are worth, it is expensive because housing is used as investment.
Their stock has been rising due to the Fed buying up a ton of assets like these. Their stock price does not reflect "reality".
People are definitely having cashflow issues and I'm guessing many got their units through a ton of leverage and are now in a very bad spot.
Will a Redfin/Zillow data scientist use new coronavirus cases / county in their pricing model? Should they?
Having said that, publicly traded companies exist to maximize profit and if extra-lowballing property owners in the hardest hit areas maximizes profit, what should stop them?
Same answer as “should I pay more for my airline/hotel/car rental than the lowest they are willing to sell for”. I know my customers are taking into account the new demand curves, I don’t see why I wouldn’t, not others wouldn’t...unless they want to be on the wrong side of a mispriced transaction.
Car prices and house prices haven't moved yet. House prices usually lag a bit behind because people have to miss a few payments and get over the emotional hurdles of losing their house before they start selling.
But it will come, unless we see a V shaped recovery, which is still possible with the money the Fed is printing.
If a family owns a vacation property outright and they’re going to miss out on some extra income then things are annoying but not terrible.
Those that bought in a leveraged scenario (and worse did so on multiple properties) are heading into a really bad situation and thus it’s understandable they’ll want to offload the property ASAP.
The original evolution of couch surfing that Airbnb started with was still cool and I like to be able to let my apartment when out of town. It's the rent seeking behaviour that distorts the housing market.
Not trying to apologize for hosts or hotels in particular, I just feel like primary residence swapping is pretty harmless. Also, if hotel licenses are required, how is adding more hotels distorting the hotel market other than adding a tiny amount of fair and regulated competition?
A lot of STR's are homes that have always been second homes or homes that would never have full occupancy in cities they occupy. They're homes that bring skiers to mountains, friends and family to beach, loved ones to touristy areas.
They create lots of revenue, jobs and the impact in their local economies is huge - from property managers to cleaning services to Lowes/Homedepot/Ikea spend to tax revenue (VRBO does collect occupancy tax where required) to working with cities for legal operations.
I'd say STR owners are just people who invested and make money through other means of hard work (and risk - such as now). The "disturbing" people are the ones like yourself who can't fathom there are millions of people who work in the STR travel industry either directly or indirectly and you seem to hate them. Most STR owners still hold their day jobs and just want to share their house (and the burden).
Not really. Yes, if someone isn't in a dense urban environment, they're going to need to cook a lot of their meals. But, unless you're in a really rural location, there are supermarkets and at least some restaurants. In a lot of cases you can pickup orders at the door even if you can't get delivery.
A lot of people seem to think you're either in Manhattan or in the wilds of Idaho somewhere. There are plenty of places that are in orbit of a major city that aren't actually all that congested.
Yes, a handful of restaurants have pickup orders but there are ~4 within a ~5 mile range, and they have the best food without going that 27 miles.
It's my perception (in part from the long order ahead times) that grocery and food delivery have gone up in areas that offer them and that modern urbanists that regularly cook at home (or even go to the grocery store only once a week) are a minority.
I have a couple nearby grocery pickup options (an hour outside a major city) but going into a store early on a weekday doesn't feel like a big problem where I live. Opinions may differ of course.
- A lot of the usual urban concerts etc. will probably be canceled and even casual eating/drinking/walking/shopping will be more awkward.
- International travel will be mostly a no-go.
- Flying in general will be more awkward
- Even a driving vacation won't be as low friction as usual
So maybe better to rent a house somewhere nice and hang out with the family.
That's a weird way of "beating expectations"
Online enablers like Redfin have perch from which to observe the market like no-other, hence the reason they can buy and sell in house with competitive technological advantage.
That said, I didn't see any data from the article to suggest what the CEO is purporting "home-buying demand is almost back to pre-pandemic levels." - so going to call BS on that full stop; he has every reason to say this esp. without a "reporter" who will challenge the statement or followup...read between the lines.
Also, these players restarting their own in-house buying programs are simply able to tweak their algorithms to low-ball and who can blame them? Does not indicate a healthy/positive market ahead either...just that they are going be hunting for deals via automated offers...again who can blame them? (Just don't interpret that move as meaning much of anything at this time).
TLDR; this is a marketing piece - give me evidence to support a claim or GTFO.
yeah that's clearly fraudulent marketing.
> Online enablers like Redfin have perch from which to observe the market like no-other
eh? Not at all. What data do they have that any MLS subscriber doesn't have?
Wouldn’t they have some insight into what people want to buy?
Sure, some people get squeezed in the short term, but in a year or two this will probably be all over and people will be desperate for their vacation.
Plus baby boomers are still retiring and more people are escaping big cities.