The #iBuyers are super good at mulcting buyer’s agents with science. That’s why they can’t price.

Mike DelPrete is worth reading, so long as you understand that, like The Inglorious Knob, he is one with The Borg. Just lately I mentioned that the iBuyers in Phoenix are nicking buyer’s agents for commission – which is just the kind of dick move you expect from financially-inept sociopaths. Coincidentally or not, yesterday DelPrete came forth with a defense of this stunt, insisting that it’s all a matter of the devilishly clever deep science that undergirds all things iBuyer.

You bet.

Why do broke Dairy Queens charge extra for napkins? It’s because they’re broke. Whatever bullshit they tell you – they’re broke.

To accept DelPrete’s argument, you would have to insist that iBuyers are optimizing a marketing cost – to their long-term disadvantage – before they optimize their resale pricing. Hundreds of iBuyer employees have read me on their pricing errors, but they have learned nothing. They are now convinced they have gotten good enough to cheat their marketing partners, when they have not yet even been tested by the market.

Here’s the truth: The iBuyers are financial disasters in the best real estate market ever known to man: Suburbia after the riots. They are temporarily able to divest their inventory, but this is caused by the buyer frenzy, not by any new marketing skills acquired by the iBuyers. They suck at resale marketing, as will become obvious, yet again, when the market turns.

The iBuyers are inept at real estate investing and marketing. That’s why they have to cheat buyer’s agents. Stealing from the defenseless is all they’ve got…