Zillow Pimps Out the News Media to Promote Their Nonsense

Zillow, which publishes plenty of nonsense, has perfected a system of getting other news organizations to promote their nonsense through a detailed and structured system of mutual back-scratching.

But before we get into that, lets start by reviewing the data as to where we are today.

Mortgage rates have finally closed ABOVE 7% for the 1st time this year, breaking through 7% briefly last week, but spending all this week above that threshold, closing at 7.14%.

Inventory continues at record lows for periods other than during the pandemic and has declined below rates of 2021. As I have repeatedly said, as long as inventory is low, prices cannot go down much.

Locally, in Los Angeles, the market grew slightly in the direction of a seller's market to a market action index of 44, higher than the last few months' rating of 43.

Some bad news that has not gotten much attention in California is that our largest homeowner insurance company, State Farm, has announced they will not write new policies.

While they say they will continue to service current customers, what that means is that their prices will rise to discourage renewals and they will become increasingly particular to encourage policy holders to leave them. Insurance companies legally cannot just quit a state as the regulators will not let them, but whereas every business in America is obsessed with growing it is clear that when State Farm says they will stop all growth they are looking for the exit sign as fast as possible.

OK, how about some good news?

The government regulations that were in place to reward people with bad credit and marginally qualifying income and tax those that otherwise qualify has been reverse.

Not sure what caused this, but it is undoubtedly good news that our government is not using this tool to punish homebuyers.

Axios tries to add to the gloom and doom real estate press with their article "Realtor boom ends as housing market slumps."

Now, that sounds bad, but how bad is it? The data in the article states that about 60,000 real estate agents have left the market out of $1.6 million. That's about 4%. Now, does a 4% reduction sound like the end of a boom? Or is it a season factor?

Their graph is misleading, as it goes down to 800k on the bottom instead of 0, but take a look at it, does it seem like a boom or another in a series of increases followed by a partial correction?

The worst "news" of the week is reported by local Fox 8 out of Cleveland, OH which is using the nonsense Zillow research to create a shopping site.

A shopping site?

Well, Zillow pays local websites like Fox 8 and their networks to run their ads to create leads, and they also give them use of their content, like this research. In this case, Zillow took a list of homes that sold for more and then identified the features in those homes. Their "research" showed that homes that have steam ovens and pizza ovens and a she shed sold for more than homes that did not.

What their research does NOT show is if the higher price was higher than the cost of the item. But, don't let that stop anyone, as Fox 8 runs their article and then attached shopping affiliate links to the items so this "news" article creates affiliate income.

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Bill Gross, The LAProbate Expert
I am a real estate broker in Los Angeles, CA focused on probate real estate and the leader of a team of over 1,100 agents nationally probate experts.

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