I have seen/shown many Zillow acquired homes but have not yet sold one of them. I believe they are paying too high of a price to the seller and then trying to make too much on the back end and many times without doing any work to the property. I have seen some IBuyer listings that have now reduced the list price to below what the company paid the seller.
If you’re not familiar with the IBuyer program from Zillow – they were making offers on Sarasota properties and then relisting them for sale. (They did this across the country, not just Sarasota) This is certainly not illegal, but what they would also do when they would buy dozens of properties in an area is they would price one or two of them at a premium to bring up the comps in the area. Who bought these homes? John Oliver on HBO actually did an entire show on this. Sketchy, to say the least.