Zillow may have helped drive up Triangle real estate prices, but its decision to exit could lead to deals

Zillow has been buying and selling homes in the Triangle for three years, and some in the real estate industry say the company has helped drive up home prices by routinely flipping homes days after buying them – sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars over what it paid.

"There has been a number of homes, probably the vast majority of them, that have been a bit overpriced," Raleigh realtor Steve Gunter said.

Realtors fielding offers as high as $1M above asking price in competitive Triangle housing market

He said his family needed to sell quickly to relocate to Florida, and Zillow made a cash offer $37,000 over his asking price.

"We just couldn’t understand where they were coming up with that number, because the comps in the area didn’t support the value they were offering me," he said. "If I was going to still stay in Raleigh, I would have moved down the street to sell it for what they were offering us."

"They’re going to need to be very careful about how many homes they’re buying per month and where they are selling those homes from a price standpoint," Gunter said.

"Whenever we have buyers looking to place offers in on those properties, we’ve just told them we’re going to need to offer less," he said. "They are beginning to sell those homes for less than what they have paid for."

"If they buy it inflated in the first place," he said, "they’re going to drop the price to what the market will sustain."