
US housing market hit a ‘significant slowdown’ in recent weeks, Redfin CEO says - xfour
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/housing-market-has-hit-a-significant-slowdown-in-recent-weeks-redfin-ceo-says-2018-08-09
======
ChuckMcM
There are all sorts of reasons that house sales slow down, not the least of
which are reduced tax benefits, higher interest rates, and a general market
forces.

The interesting thing to watch for is the flipper sales. Which is to say if a
significant chunk of the market in your area is actually being held by people
who bought the house just to flip it, then when you get two or three months of
flat to downward pressure on house prices they will all yell "Peak!" and run
for the exits. Then you'll see a nice flurry of downward movement as these
folks try to unwind their position before the market falls into a hole that
loses them money. Pro tip, there aren't enough chairs and the music is no
longer playing :-).

That could bring some welcome relief for home buyers who have struggled in the
'no contingency cash only' markets like parts of the Bay Area.

~~~
danjoc
That's not really what happened in the last crash though. The people who
bought, held. The only people who got hurt were home owners who go underwater
and then lose a job. They can't afford to wait it out, they can't afford to
make the payment, so they end up in foreclosure. Then the bank holds and it
ends up as a zombie home.[1] The zombie falls to pieces, so the bank gets a
bail out, the home is written off, and the market is just as tight as it ever
was. All the flippers are going to do is rent the places out while they hold
on for the next run up. At least, that's what I witnessed in the last crash.

[https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/07/25/zombie-homes-
without...](https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/07/25/zombie-homes-without-
owners-forgotten-by-banks/)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Flippers are like canaries in the mine. They are usually leveraged like crazy
on short term loans, not flipping the house quickly can be fatal to them.
Rental won’t let them pay off there loans when they come due in a couple of
months.

~~~
r00fus
Cant rental (ie, passive) income be used to secure additional funding?

I know that was the case when I considered buying property to rent back before
the 2008 crash (I ended up not doing that, luckily).

~~~
raincom
Yes, 75% of rent can be used. It is called "market rent", according to Fannie
Mae. Remaining 25% is used for Vacancies, etc.

In California markets, rental properties are not profitable, when you consider
20% downpayment, 75% rent, etc.

There are 4 kinds of buyers in this market:

1\. First home buyers: renters becoming buyers. 2\. Second home buyers: thanks
to the appreciation of their primary residence, people have bought second
homes for "retirement nest egg", "return on equity", etc. Borrow 80% at 4.5%,
expect 15% return. 3\. Moving Up: same like (2), but they sell primary
residences. 4\. Flippers

It is kind of hard of flippers to get conventional loans; they have to use
portfolio banks, banks that keep loans on their books. A bank I know of,
offers 6% fixed first year, variable rate for the next five years. Flippers
get these deals, after putting 20 to 30% down.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Right, flippers aren’t taking conventional housing loans on the properties
they are flipping. They are getting short term lines of credit instead because
they don’t expect to have the house for more than a few months.

~~~
alexibm
I'm not sure what kind of flippers you are referring, but usually there are no
loans. Cash purchases - 100% for the entire value of the property. Source: my
parents are prof. flippers.

~~~
randysavage
This is pretty unusual for anyone doing it seriously. I've "flipped" (not
exactly -- mostly major additions and teardowns that we hold for 6-12 months)
the past 5 years and haven't met anyone who exclusively uses their own cash.
We use some of our own cash, but you have to look at the opportunity cost.

The interesting part has been the interest rates. We started out borrowing
hard money at 14% and are down to 7-8% now depending on the lender. Lots of
cash out there chasing returns.

------
ProfessorLayton
The upcoming changes in the tax code certainly did not help the housing
market:

\- The new SALT cap is extremely low, particularly if you own a home in the
Bay Area. 10K! Mitigative solution: Stay put and keep current tax base,
hampering both supply and demand (for a nicer home)

\- The doubled standard deduction made owning _with a mortgage_ less
attractive (But a win overall once your loan is paid off enough).

\- Mortgage interest deduction lowered from 1M to 750K (I believe it's 1/2 if
you're buying alone). Houses are so expensive here this actually matters. On
the supply side: More post-tax money + higher interest rates means those who
locked into great rates won't want to sell, or want to buy a more expensive
home. On the demand side: All of the above means everything just got even more
expensive.

EDIT: Regardless of what your stance is on mortgage interest deductions,
there's no doubt that the upcoming tax code changes threw cold water onto the
housing market.

This wouldn't be such an issue if there was more supply in the first place,
but here we are.

~~~
jeffbax
This is all true, but the mortgage interest deduction should be $0,
particularly in the rich cities that refuse to let enough homes get built and
fix things like zoning. It's an awful distortion that's a handout to the
wealthy to the penalty of renters (generally less well off)

~~~
astura
I'm a homeowner and I think it's an absolute crime my mortgage interest is tax
deductible yet rent isn't. If we believe, at a philosophical level, that
interest payments should be tax deductible, ok, then make ALL interest paid
tax deductible - credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, payday loans, etc.

It's shameful.

That being said, with the new tax bill, 90+% of both owners and renters will
be taking the standard deduction this year. It is my opinion that's a good
thing, it's my opinion the standard deduction should truly be standard.
However, moving all the middle and upper middle class into taking standard
deduction makes the mortgage interest deduction basically exclusively for the
very wealthy.

~~~
mark212
The entire (expressly stared) reason to make mortgage interest deductable was
to encourage more home ownership.

You may disagree that that’s a desirable policy goal (and I might agree with
you), but comparing it to some other payment that isn’t deductable misses the
point entirely. Especially rent. Congress wanted to create an economic dis-
incentive to being a renter and push people to own the homes they live in.

~~~
jsoc815
> _The entire (expressly stared) reason to make mortgage interest deductable
> was to encourage more home ownership._

IIRC it was actually to encourage more _borrowing_ so that the _banks could
securitize and sell off the loans_. Increased home "ownership" was/is the
altruistic reason presented to the public so that they feel good about the
whole thing. Not looking to start an argument here, but there are plenty of
other ways to encourage "ownership" that don't require encouraging debt
peonage and market inflation.

Also when credit cards were first becoming a mainstream thing, the interest on
that was also tax deductible. I forget the specifics about why it was deemed
acceptable to dispense w/that tax break.

~~~
tzs
Both that and the encourage home ownership theory seem unlikely when it comes
to why it was deductible in the first place.

It became deductible in 1913, but simply because in 1913 all interest became
deductible. The first $3k ($4k married) was excluded. Only the top 1% paid
enough interest to take any deduction, and very little of that would have been
mortgage interest because they usually bought their homes outright.

Wikipedia claims that the reason they made interest deductible on personal
income taxes was that in a nation of small proprietors the line is fuzzy
between personal and business expenses, and it was simpler to just make it all
deductible instead of just trying to allow business interest to be deducted.

As for why credit card interest later became non-deductible, it is kind of the
inverse of why mortgage interest is deductible. That is just as mortgage
interest became deductible because all interest became deductible, credit card
interest became non-deductible because _almost_ all interest became non-
deductible. The Reagan tax reforms took away almost all such deductions except
the mortgage deduction.

As to why Congress decided to save the mortgage deduction when they were
killing all the rest--I have no idea. That was in 1986, when a lot more than
the top 1% were taking it, and most homes were bought using mortgages, so both
the "encourage home ownership" theory and the "encourage more borrowing to
please the banks" theories are plausible, at least.

~~~
jsoc815
I appreciate your digging into this. The 1913 tidbit is an interesting
wrinkle.

I'd say, based on experience and conversations w/ elected officials, at the
end of the day "encourage home ownership" is less likely to be a driver, but
more so a selling point to the public.

I also seem to remember reading in a number of sources, one of Michael Lewis'
books comes to mind, is that Lew Ranieri (and friends) _is_ a probable reason
for the deduction's survival if, as you suggest, there was any real discussion
about cutting the MI deduction.

I can also tell you that NAR, for the more recent discussion about cutting the
MI and SALT deductions would have been (and were) a significant factor in
lobbying _against_ changes that they would expect to slow sales.

Externally, lobbying is talked about as some sort of corrupting force to be
excised. Internally, it's simply considered to be an _integral_ part of the
legislative process. IMHO, people should attribute less to altruism decisions
that are likely linked to someone's lobbying efforts.

Thanks again.

------
pyoung
Anecdote, but my wife and I dropped out of the market recently and rented
instead. The rent was 30-40% cheaper than a mortgage would have been on a
similar place (including taxes, insurance, etc...). So we figured we would
just put the after-tax difference into a 401k (because 401k is pre-tax, for
every dollar we 'saved' in housing cost, we are putting ~1.4 dollars into
401k). I figure that building equity in a house has similar investment
timeline to the 401k, so it doesn't really bother me whether my net worth
comes from one or the other, and unlike a house I can diversify the 401k via
different index funds. In terms of ROI, the buy vs rent calculators are all
starting to lean towards renting[1], so unless we are going to be in the same
house for 12-15 years (unlikely) renting seems to win (and this assumes fairly
good/neutral economic outlook, if you turn some of the knobs on the calculator
to assume negative growth, oh boy...) .

Add to the fact that most folks don't really know how the new tax laws will
impact them until they do the calculations early next year, and the fact the
rising interests rates should put downward pressure on the market, and the
rather volatile political situation (who really knows where this tariff thing
is going to go, and how it will impact the economy), and it just made more
sense to wait it out.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-
cal...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-
calculator.html)

~~~
all_blue_chucks
My house in Seattle has been appreciating by about $100k/year over the past
five years. In other words, I'm making $100k/year on a $50k investment. You
wont find returns like that in a 401k. And my interest payments are less than
rent would be. Last but not least, home appreciation is TAX FREE up to half a
million bucks.

By all means, max out the $20k or so you are allowed to put into a 401k, but
don't fool yourself into thinking it will outperform what is essentially a
government-subsidized leveraged investment. You have to have exceptionally bad
timing or move very frequently to lose in real estate.

~~~
lottin
You're talking about unrealised profits. In order for the profits to be
realised you need to _sell_ the house. So what happens then? Either you keep
the profits and are left without a house, or you buy another house and are
left without a profit. Because, you see, it's not only your particular house
that has appreciated, all houses have.

~~~
all_blue_chucks
What you say is true only if you never downsize and never leave a hot market.
Realistically most people will book those profits when they no longer need to
live next to a job center. When you don't need that downtown job anymore you
can sell a million dollar house in a big city and buy a nicer house for half
that elsewhere, pocketing the other half million as pure, tax-free profit.

~~~
perl4ever
"What you say is true only if you never downsize and never leave a hot
market."

What you say is true only if you know exactly _when_ to downsize and leave a
hot market.

It can be the case that housing will always be more valuable in one place than
another. But it can't be the case that the _rate of increase_ will always be
dramatically higher, because that will lead to a runaway differential.
Therefore you have to expect a correction at a time that is uncertain.

~~~
all_blue_chucks
No, that's simply incorrect. The rising tide of inflation will lift expensive
house prices more than inexpensive house prices. And no matter where you live,
there is always a cheaper place you can go to when you sell your home. It's
called a cost of living arbitrage.

------
CamTin
Just today (in Austin) I saw a banner by the road outside a bank offering
"100% financing" for homebuyers. If banks breathlessly pitching to lend buyers
the entirety of a home's price is not a sign of an overheated debt-led housing
market, I don't know what is.

~~~
danjoc
It gets worse than that,

[https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/interest-only-
mort...](https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/interest-only-mortgages/)

~~~
mark212
Is this the first you’re hearing of an interest only mortgage? They have been
very popular in Southern California for a couple of decades. The theory is
that it allows the speculator / owner to get a much more expensive home and
just pay the interest for 3 to 10 years. Then sell and reap the massive
appreciation. Except of course when the market goes the other way and you’re
underwater and then whoops! the payment flips to fully amortized (interest and
principal) and you can’t afford it.

Welcome to 2007! But don’t worry you’ll be unemployed in another year too!

~~~
frankc
There are also perfectly valid use cases for interest only mortgages. The
classic case is for people with highly variable incomes, for instance people
working on commission or people working in bonus driven industries. In lean
years you pay just then interest and in healthy years you pay down some
principle.

------
mortenjorck
The Case-Shiller Index currently has home prices rising at 2-3x inflation:
[https://www.housingwire.com/articles/46307-case-shiller-
home...](https://www.housingwire.com/articles/46307-case-shiller-home-prices-
rising-at-least-twice-the-rate-of-inflation) That would certainly seem to be
unsustainable.

~~~
debacle
We're still post-crash, and China is putting a lot of money into American real
estate.

~~~
anonymous5133
We aren't at post-crash anymore. House prices have fully recovered and now
exceed the previous housing bubble peak.

Foreign buyers could be a catalyst that has inflated the home prices to new
heights.

------
arenaninja
I wonder if the trade hostilities are affecting foreign (particularly Chinese)
real estate purchases in the US. I suspect this is the case, but it's probably
not enough to significantly contribute to the slowdown (at least not more so
than rising mortgage rates and overheated prices)

~~~
anonymous5133
IMO, I think the foreign buyers will be a bigger factor than many think
primarily because it was an external force not directly reliant on local wages
to buy. In essence, the foreign buyers were able to prop up or increase prices
much higher than the market equilibrium. If you take away those buyers then
the whole thing quickly loses its foundation and falls in on itself. I think
this will be the case. People think the foreign buyers are always going to be
there but this is hardly the truth.

~~~
56chan4
There are lots of factors at play, some are more significant that others in
one area of a country than another. Take Brexit, 5th largest economy, if you
look at UK car stats (SMMT website) businesses are in recession as far as car
manufacturers are concerned. Another factor, the GBP has dropped, this makes
investing in London attractive for overseas buyers who may have invested in
the US market. Plus as London house prices have dropped this also becomes
attractive to overseas buyers. In turn as London property is very expensive,
this drags the average's up for the price of property in the rest of the
country. These factors will be repeated in many countries around the world,
but one thing the US has lots of which counts against the US housing market,
is land. The UK is highly populated, England is densely populated, the demand
for land in the UK is at a much higher premium than in other parts of the
world like Europe or the US. In turn, the UK landowners benefit from this
global demand ie stability to park money in UK assets due to the reputation of
the UK on the global stage, ie no major revolutions in recent history, one of
the oldest legal & financial systems in the world. All this stability to park
money in the UK pumps up property prices, so with Trump getting into office,
is he lowering your property prices considering his flip flopping around with
what he says? I see Trumps election as a desperate attempt to consolidate the
US position on the global stage as the rest of the world wants detach itself
from the petrodollar. As the dollar declines much of your money has to now be
spent on things to help you live instead of just going into property. Be
prepared for inflation and hedge accordingly, property prices falling is good
for the wider US economy, as high property prices where a great % of income is
going on servicing the property is bad for the wider economy. Besides there
are more Basel requirements coming in next year and many banks have not got
themselves ready for that either.

One other thing, Brexit, 5th largest economy, if the EU doesnt allow the UK to
stay in the single market, what sort of effect on the global economy will the
UK market crashing out of the EU single market and going into major recession
have on the global economy. Brexit in a way has the global economy by the
balls and the EU led by Germany will be seen as the bad guys for not budging
on their philosophy.

------
ntkachov
I can put some perspective on this. We got priced out of the market in Feb.
According to the bank, we can't get a mortgage where the overall cost of the
payments on all our debt can't exceed 41% of our pre-tax income. Given that
our student loans eat about 20% of our pre-tax income, that means we only have
20% of our income left for housing. Rising interest rates means that more of
our house payment goes to interest which means less of it is left for
principal, so we cannot afford the same home we could last Oct. The tax
incentives used to mean that we could deduct a good chunk of our housing costs
from our taxes and use some of that money to live, bringing it inline with
what we would pay for rent. However, that changed and made renting easier on
us financially.

High student loan payments and high mortgage rates means that the only thing
left to give is the price of the home. Or the bank can be cool with us
leveraging ourselves to 50+% income.

~~~
jakelarkin
if youre paying 20% of your income to student loans, buying a house isnt
exactly the best play. Student loan interest is a scam. Dig deep and pay that
jam off as quickly as a you can.

~~~
wyclif
Best advice in this thread, IMO.

------
mjevans
Housing is only an 'investment' because of how expensive it inherently is.

However, my opinion has been that housing /has been/ in a bubble since at
least the mid 2000s (pre recession); and it didn't actually deflate (at least
in the area I live in) /during/ that recession.

It would really be nice if some way of fixing this bubble chasing nonsense
happened. Maybe if healthcare and retirement were fully socialized this would
be less of an issue.

~~~
rspeer
Cars are expensive but aren't investments; they're depreciating assets. In
Tokyo, housing is a depreciating asset too.

In the US, housing is an appreciating investment because we've made that a
political axiom, and because homeowners hold political power that let them
fight any policy that would make housing cheaper.

~~~
puranjay
Cars are a depreciating asset because you can always manufacture more of them

Housing appreciates because land supply is limited in big cities. You can't
manufacture more land

~~~
rspeer
How simplistic. America has enough _land_. Vast swaths of it are empty.

What we don't have enough of is _density_ in the places where people actually
want to be, and that's not a natural limit. You could make more density, if it
weren't illegal in all of these desirable places.

And I just mentioned Tokyo, which actually does have serious land constraints
but does zoning and transit well. (And where they _are_ making more land.)
Ordinary people can afford homes there and almost nobody is homeless.

"They're not making any more land" isn't a relevant thing about urbanism, it's
just a cliche that a realtor says to convince you to buy.

~~~
puranjay
It's not as simple as merely lifting regulations to support high density
housing. The underlying infrastructure has to be able to support that density
as well.

Most cities would fail to function if they all had the same density as New
York or Tokyo

To solve the infrastructure problem, you have to, again, invest billions.

------
farnsworth
I closed on a condo in Seattle literally this morning. Did I buy at the exact
worst possible time?

~~~
shoo
It depends why you were buying it. Were you buying to flip it as a short term
investment, or a place to live in for the next 5-10-20+ years?

the market price only matters if you're forced to sell or forced to buy. if
you dont need to sell or dont need to buy, you can ignore it

~~~
brandall10
I bought my last place in 2006, intending to live there at least 5-10 years.

I ended up living there for 11 years, with the majority of the time being
there with it some $120k underwater. It was terrible and I wished I had waited
a year or two - not only did I pay more to service a more expensive mortgage,
I walked away with considerably less equity than I would have if I just
waited.

I don't know how anyone could possibly be thinking about purchasing a place
right now. It's been 12 years since the last crash started and real estate is
traditionally on a 10 year boom/bust cycle. _Even if_ you think you want to
live in your place for decades, things happen. As always, if you can help it,
buy low, sell high, don't pander to emotion on what is one of the biggest
purchases you can make.

~~~
chrisseaton
> I don't know how anyone could possibly be thinking about purchasing a place
> right now.

Well people need a roof over their heads. In a lot of areas (more rural for
example) rental properties aren’t very common and they’re often smaller places
so if you have a family and want somewhere to sleep at night you’ll need to
buy.

~~~
brandall10
Right, but those aren’t the places we’re talking about that have huge swings
due to the national boom/bust cycle... ie. cities and suburbs of those cities.

Basic rule of thumb - if you can rent a like property for less than you can
purchase, you should rent, esp. when things are toward the top of the market.
The irrational fear that one will be priced out of a market leads to bad
decisions. The idea that renting is throwing money away/giving it to a
landlord leads to bad decisions.

------
dijit
At some point you hit the cap of what people can possibly spend.

Depressed earnings in all but a tiny sector, and incredibly inflated house
prices.

Perpetual growth is unsustainable in this manner, but is expected by
investors.

I hope the market corrects. Not for my sake (I live in Sweden and have no US
desires) but for those who hope to have a life and family near their ancestral
home.

I am not preaching to the choir of HN, people on this site generally have it a
lot better than the people who also live in the places that are huge tech
hubs.

~~~
nutjob2
Pretty sure my ancestral home is somewhere on Mayfair. I demand access to an
affordable London flat thereabouts!

Also if you're talking about the Bay Area, much of the real estate pricing
there is driven by the anti-development tendencies of the owners of ancestral
homes, either lining their own pockets or pushing some misguided political
wheelbarrow (especially in SF). In that sense it's largely self inflicted. In
other places even uneven economic growth tends to create bigger cities as the
wealth spreads through the economy via construction and services and the like.
It's when you try to fight the market that you get unintended consequences.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Pretty sure my ancestral home is somewhere on Mayfair. I demand access to
> an affordable London flat thereabouts!_

We’d better get around to ceding Manhattan back to the Lenape, too.

~~~
dijit
Maybe I chose poor words. Ancestral meaning “where my mother/father and
grandparents, nieces, nefews etc live.

I come from a city in England called Coventry. Family ties are what keep most
of the population in place- perhaps “familial” is a better word.

The idea of not being able to live close to family is distressing to many of
my fellow city dwellers.

You can argue the semantics of how valuable such a thing is. You can even
argue that the entire family unit should probably move somewhere cheaper, or
that commuting to see your mum isn’t all that bad. But honestly; it would take
a lot for me to revisit the idea that I am not able to live amongst my family.
Even if I personally did not choose to.

------
benatkin
If they were assuming that because I turned 30 this decade I'd suddenly become
interested in owning a home, they were wrong! If the financial pundits
believed all the articles the culture pundits were writing about millennials
they could have known.

------
h4b4n3r0
About time it slowed down. My house is over 2x what I paid for it 6 years ago.
I pay $10k/yr in taxes just to live in it, WTF.

~~~
SomewhatLikely
Teachers have to live somewhere too.

~~~
h4b4n3r0
I agree. But I don't see how it has any bearing on the situation: they are
affected by the extremely high housing prices as well, to a much greater
extent, and real estate taxes, while high, represent only a small fraction of
state revenue. Sales and business taxes dominate there. Then there's the issue
of the explosion of administrative personnel. As a parent, I'm not even sure
what most of those folks do. I'm sure they "have to live somewhere", but I'd
rather spend the money on teachers, schools, and supplies, TBH.

------
blairanderson
Seattle has significantly slowed.

~~~
stephengillie
[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/more-
seatt...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/more-seattle-area-
home-sellers-lower-list-prices-as-market-cools-way-down/)

------
greglindahl
Misleading label from HN - article is amp from Market Watch, not actually
google.com.

Ideally, HN would point at the original.

Personally, my phone Adblock prevents google from spying on my traffic in
general, but these cached amp links get tracked by google.

~~~
dang
Yes. Url changed from
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/g...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/5038160C-9C1F-11E8-A46C-BBDE1A6795F5).

Submitters: please don't post those! It's important that readers see what
domain a story is coming from.

~~~
r00fus
dang, Why doesn't HN simply warn submitters to not use AMP urls or reject them
outright?

~~~
dang
Different sites encode them differently, making it complicated to detect in
code.

------
nielsbot
non-AMP link: [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/housing-market-has-hit-
a-s...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/housing-market-has-hit-a-
significant-slowdown-in-recent-weeks-redfin-ceo-says-2018-08-09)

------
parrellel
Why does this link say Google?

~~~
shoo
From the url it looks like marketwatch.com site is using google's AMP thing to
implement a lightweight site, then google is mirroring it / distributing it
through some AMP CDN hosted from a google domain.

(this explanation is perhaps only 60% right, someone who actually knows about
AMP may like to weigh in and correct me)

------
Animats
The article title needs punctuation.

~~~
dang
We changed the title from "Housing hit unexpected slowdown Shares of Redfin
drop 20%".

Submitters: please don't rewrite titles like that. If an article title is
neither misleading nor linkbait, the site guidelines ask you not to change it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
Jedd
Thanks dang. Perhaps modify it to 'US Housing market ...'

~~~
dang
Sure.

------
paulie_a
Redfin didn't exactly do anything interesting or unique. It was literally yet
another real estate app/website. It's not surprising.

~~~
tompetry
To be fair, Redfin is a technology focused MLS member and agency, not just a
listings aggregation app. You're entitled to your opinion if you don't think
that is interesting or unique, but their offering is far more than just a
website and app. Interesting data on their agent stats and comp here:
[https://www.redfin.com/blog/2018/01/how-much-do-redfin-
agent...](https://www.redfin.com/blog/2018/01/how-much-do-redfin-agents-
earn.html)

~~~
paulie_a
I worked in that industry. It really is a pretty "meh" company.

Also there is no MLS, there are a lot of them.

~~~
debacle
Though the MLS is pretty distrubuted, these days you can consider it as a
single entity for the most part, though the shenanigans from the early 2000s
still happen every day.

~~~
paulie_a
You absolutely cannot consider it as a single entity. It is not distributed,
it is fractured. There is zero consistency. I got out of that industry a while
back and I still have the local MLS phone number memorized.

It's a complete shit show as of 2013. Basically anything that is on any MLS
I've seen is probably incorrect.

~~~
debacle
Yeah it was pretty bad 5-10 years ago, but working with it as recently as
Tuesday, I can say that the major benefit of sites like Zillow and Redfin is
that MLS companies have had to adapt fast to stay competitive. The realtor I'm
working with has changed MLS platforms three times in the last year alone.

~~~
paulie_a
When I was selling my condo last year I asked for it to be kept off of Zillow.
That site is incredibly innacurate for integrating data. Their cute name for
pricing is always way off in my experience.

