I am interested to read a deeper explanation, especially from an insider, if any are available. Many of the economists I know are pointing to a very well-known

I am interested to read a deeper explanation, especially from an insider, if any are available. Many of the economists I know are pointing to a very well-known risk in first-price auctions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse Essentially the problem is: conditional on buying the house, you overpaid. Zillow does have an economics team (though the people I know there do not work on this). I can't imagine they wouldn't have been warned in great detail about this if they were in the room when this was discussed!