Zillow Exposed?! TikToker Presents Nefarious Theory And Everyone’s Talking About It!

UPDATE 9/24 4:30 P.M. PST: Following the viral chatter surrounding this TikTok video, Zillow actually dropped a statement! Per Inman, the CEO of the marketplace company denied any truth to the theory, calling it an example of “misinformation and falsehoods” — which, in this day and age, is a big F-U! The statement then went on to read:

“The simple truth is that through our services and tools, home shoppers have more power than ever before at their fingertips when buying, selling or renting their home because of the information we make available to them. We pay market value for every home we purchase. When we looked at homes that sold traditionally after they declined a Zillow Offer, we learned that on average, those selling traditionally sold for only .09 percent more than the Zillow Offer. And on every home that Zillow buys and sells, we are transparent: the purchase and re-sale prices are publicly displayed on the property page on Zillow.com.”

Well if y’all say so!

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A certain online real estate marketplace company that may or may not start with the letter Z and rhymes with willow may or may not have some explaining to do…

Hopping on TikTok last week, a longtime real estate agent named Sean Gotcher took the time to present a theory that, if true, would expose alleged manipulations of the market for an unnamed company’s personal gain. In the viral video, he dropped a hypothetical scenario in which the business that “everybody used and everybody knew of to look for new houses” starts purchasing homes in a neighborhood at a significantly less price than what the place may actually cost. He explained:

“So that company they just sit back, and they just collect all that data. They just know what zip code is looking at what zip code and how much those people can afford. Everyone’s looking at this one zip code. Everybody seems to be able to afford this certain amount, and let’s say that billion-dollar company uses that information to go into that zip code and start purchasing houses because the people that are selling their houses even though they sell it for a little bit less sometimes than what the home could actually be worth, and they pay these high fees to this billion-dollar company. It’s a convenience factor. So this company is scooping up houses for less than what they actually could cost.”

Gotcher then provided an example, saying that the company allegedly picked up several homes in a specific location for $300,000. However, after buying 30 houses, the company willingly shells out $340,000 for a similar pad, which inevitability boosts the value of the other residences in the neighborhood:

“What that just did is create a new comp, so when they go to see these other 30 homes, that extra $40,000, you can say this one just sold for $340,000, just made them $1.2 million off that one neighbor because they know from their research how much people can afford in that zip code.”

Mind blown! FYI, real estate comps are recently sold places that are similar to the property someone’s trying to either buy or sell based on the location, size, condition, and features. Comps are often used to determine the home’s market value through the sales of another property. So what Gotcher is basically getting at here is that the big corporation is fixing prices for more profit by inflating the comps. Ch-ch-check out the entire wild theory (below):

@seangotcher

#housing

♬ San Tropez – Illect Recordings

While the real estate agent doesn’t specifically mention the company’s name, social media users have speculated he was talking about the one and only Zillow. It was even trending on Twitter Thursday, that’s how many people were pointing the finger at the big Z!

One person wrote alongside two side-eye emojis: