For those who missed it, Zillow had a house flipping side business that was buying houses from people at high as shit prices, with the plan to drive up the price of neighborhoods even higher somehow. They since stopped and fired 25% of its workforce, at first saying it was the fault of the labor shortage, but later admitting to their house buying algorithm being too aggressive with house buying prices.

Meanwhile Redfin says they only have iBuying as a side business:

“This is a business that could scale to any size you want if you’re willing to overpay for houses,” said Kelman. “If you have to buy houses every day of the week in every type of market condition, you are just force-feeding yourself potentially toxic assets.”

In other words, iBuying algorithms are bad for Zillow's case, but are also untested in volatile real estate market conditions. At worst they could single-handedly cause a housing market collapse. Cool! But in the meantime, these companies will drive up the price for houses, and subsequently for renters too.

The real "innovation" they're making here is in keeping the house selling process easy, meaning no inspections of the home except to make sure no one is occupying it post-sale. Just another case of big tech petina painted over what is ultimately just a shittier way of doing business. Opendoor and the like will probably be fine for now though, I have no clue what will happen to the housing market anyways. Things could get fun though....