>Zillow was literally scalping housing [...]. That's generally considered very immoral by most reasonable people.
sorry, what were they doing?
Scalping may also refer to:
Scalping (trading), in trading securities and commodities either a fraudulent form of market manipulation or a legitimate form of arbitrage
Ticket resale, the resale of tickets to a public event such as a concert or sporting event
The arbitrage definition under "Scalping (trading)" (ie. making money off the bid/ask spread) doesn't seem very immoral to me. I don't think they were buying houses in an area, then recommending people to buy it, so it doesn't fall under the fraudulent definition. The "ticket resale" definition doesn't really fit, because zillow isn't really acquiring houses at below market value. They're buying houses from the same market as everyone else.
>a basic human need that all people must buy
you need to buy housing, not necessarily a house. They're not the same thing. You need to buy food to survive, but you don't necessarily to buy a farm.
>tens of thousands of homes sold last quarter, was a sale to a scalper to artificially drive up all housing prices
but the fact that they lost money suggests that they didn't drive up housing prices?
sorry, what were they doing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping_(disambiguation)The arbitrage definition under "Scalping (trading)" (ie. making money off the bid/ask spread) doesn't seem very immoral to me. I don't think they were buying houses in an area, then recommending people to buy it, so it doesn't fall under the fraudulent definition. The "ticket resale" definition doesn't really fit, because zillow isn't really acquiring houses at below market value. They're buying houses from the same market as everyone else.
>a basic human need that all people must buy
you need to buy housing, not necessarily a house. They're not the same thing. You need to buy food to survive, but you don't necessarily to buy a farm.
>tens of thousands of homes sold last quarter, was a sale to a scalper to artificially drive up all housing prices
but the fact that they lost money suggests that they didn't drive up housing prices?