The L.A. City Council is exploring options to ban the popular iBuyer companies from picking up even more Los Angeles real estate.
Pointing to L.a.’s very high real estate costs, along with the area’s high cost of living expenses, Councilwomen Nury Martinez and Nithya Raman authored a motion which, in part, blames iBuyers for worsening the problem.
“The housing crisis has been further exacerbated by high tech companies such as Zillow, Opendoor, Rockethomes, and Redfin as well as private equity firms,” the motion reads, as reported by LAist. “These companies primarily target affordable, single-family homes and compete to buy up as much inventory as possible, flip them, and then sell them for a profit.”
Now, at it’s most recent meeting, the Los Angeles City Council voted to explore ways of stopping companies like Zillow from purchasing single-family homes in the city. The council has now directed the City Legislative Analyst and City Attorney to report back on potential ways of preventing iBuyer companies from purchasing homes in L.A. and flipping them for profit.
While Zillow was explicitly called out in the motion, the company announced last week that it is getting out of the iBuyer business.