What was reported by Marketplace and iirc CNBC is that the problem Zillow ran into was a shortage of local labor to renovate the houses they purchased.

Which makes sense, as anyone who has tried to hire a contractor in the last six months could have told you. I'm not sure if their ML/data tools accounted for that.

But this quote struck something with me :

> “It’s like it’s making decisions two to three months too late relative to the market.”

That's true of everyone buying homes. The only people who have up to date information on what homes are selling for are the local agents, banks, and lenders. If you're trying to understand home pricing from the outside your data is lagging the market by 45-60 days at a minimum.

When I was putting offers on homes over the summer I was astounded how hard it was to find out what a fair price was. For a layperson it was essentially impossible.