"Zillow Is Buying And Selling Lots Of Homes And It's Almost Half Its Business Now"

Buzzfeed:

Zillow is now buying thousands of properties, investing in minor repairs, and then selling them — essentially flipping houses — in 15 markets around the country, with plans to be in 26 markets by mid-2020. It collects a fee from the seller with each of these transactions. The company sold 786 homes and bought 1,535 homes from April to June.

This is not yet a profitable business for Zillow. Its Homes segment lost $71.1 million last quarter. But the company plans to eventually make money from the program by attracting more mortgage customers (it acquired a small mortgage company in November) through these sales, and also selling referrals to real estate agents as more homeowners express interest in selling their homes to Zillow.

Related:

For the past two years, WeWork Cos. has spent more than $40 million to host a series of startup pitch competitions around the world. The real estate company asks contestants to pitch apps or creative projects to celebrity panels of judges and compete for cash prizes, in between musical performances from the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This year, it hoped to go much bigger.

WeWork teamed up with Ashton Kutcher to pitch a television show to NBC based on the contest, known as the Creator Awards, according to two people familiar with the talks. The show would be similar to Shark Tank and have camera crews follow contestants around the events. The project hasn’t panned out, though, and is currently on hold.

*Previously: "A Forest Hill couple took their neighbours to court for copying the look of their multimillion-dollar home"