Spencer Rascoff, the former CEO of Zillow and the entrepreneur behind Pacaso and Supernova Partners Acquisition Company, Inc., reportedly bought a second home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood, according to a report from Variety. And he paid more than $1 million over the Zestimate, according to the report.
Spencer Rascoff | Photo credit: Twitter
Rascoff, who was trying to sell his other Brentwood home for $24 million in March — which was $8 million more than the Zestimate — appears to have paid $5.7 million for the home, which is just one block away from his current Brentwood home, according to the report.
Rascoff was represented in the purchase of the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom home on a quarter-acre lot by Josh and Matt Altman of The Altman Brothers team at Douglas Elliman, who also represented him in the listing of his home in March.
Rascoff pulled the home after less than a month on the market, right as COVID-19 lockdown orders were being put into place, according to the listing history on Zillow.
The Zestimate is the proprietary automated valuation modeling tool created by Zillow, which has invested heavily in improving its accuracy. But despite that investment, the tool hasn’t always captured the value of Rascoff’s home sales or purchases.
Other than the $8 million discrepancy between listing price and Zestimate in early March, in 2016, Rascoff sold his Seattle-area home for $1.05 million, which was 40 percent less than the Zestimate said the home was worth.
The tool has drawn occasional ire from some real estate agents, who feel it often puts them in the unfair position of defending their own comparative market analysis versus a tool that hasn’t actually been inside the home. It’s also been at the center of an antitrust lawsuit against Zillow.
Outside of his real estate buying and listing activity, it’s been an eventful year for Rascoff, the former co-founder and longtime CEO of Zillow.
In September, Rascoff and Austin Allison, the founder and CEO of dotloop, announced the launch of Pacaso, a real estate startup that aims to allow prospective buyers to co-own second homes with other vetted buyers.
Last month, Rascoff launched Supernova Partners Acquisition Company, Inc., a special purpose acquisition company, with the goal of finding a startup to take public.
