Mike DelPrete, a global real estate technology strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, recently spoke at Marquette University Center for Real Estate’s annual residential real estate symposium, discussing the iBuyer industry and what companies like Zillow, OpenDoor and Redfin are planning.
“The market is so big, there’s plenty of room for everybody to play. And at the end of the day, I think what’s not going to change over the next 10 years is people will want an expert to guide them through the process.”
“Real estate is so expensive, and it’s such a big decision. People are going to spend so much money and loss aversion kicks in. It’s not like buying a toothbrush. It’s such a big deal that consumers are willing to deal with pain, put up work and look at multiple websites.”
“Zillow and Redfin have been public companies for about 10 or 15 years now. They’ve never made money. It doesn’t matter, investors don’t really care. The reason they’re supporting them is they believe in this future vision where they will make money, and they will achieve a profit.”
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DelPrete[/caption]
“The pandemic has created this narrative, this hype of, ‘everything’s changed, technology is changing everything and real estate has changed, and we’re never going back. And now people are 10 times more likely to use technology.’ A lot of that is self-serving hype generated by companies who are set to benefit from that, if that’s true.”
“If you’re a homeowner and you want to sell your home, the value of getting an instant offer (from iBuyers) is at an all-time low. There’s so much buyer demand, and supply is so constrained, if you want to sell your home, why wouldn’t you just put it on the market?”
