This LinkedIn post by Compass CEO Robert Reffkin caught my attention. An excerpt:
For years, Zillow has led sellers to believe that getting their home on Zillow.com was important to sell their home. But new research by our Chief Data Officer and Chief Economist shared earlier this week analyzing over 300,000 homes revealed: homes on Zillow sold for 1.3% less. We call this loss the “Zillow Tax.”
When Zillow.com displays negative insights on your home like days on market, price cut history, algorithmic Zestimates less than the home’s value, climate risk, flood risk, and fire risk (all unofficial risk scores), money gets left on the table.
Do you catch what he’s saying in that second paragraph? He’s openly advocating for hiding relevant, important data about a home from home buyers in order to sucker them into paying more. The “study” he’s promoting is literally just Compass bragging about how limiting the amount of information buyers have access to will trick them into overpaying for homes.
Absolutely wild to see him bragging about this out in the open.
