Real estate giant Zillow Group Inc. has announced it is winding down Zillow Offers, its tech-driven home-flipping platform, citing insufficient predictability in the system’s home price forecasting algorithms, driving up risk and hurting profitability. “We’ve determined the unpredictability in forecasting home prices far exceeds what we anticipated and continuing to scale Zillow Offers would result in too much earnings and balance-sheet volatility,” Zillow Group co-founder and CEO Rich Barton, said in a Nov. 2 earnings release (pdf). Around 25 percent of Zillow’s workforce will be cut and the company will take combined third-quarter and fourth-quarter writedowns of up to $569 million, according to the release, with the wind-down of Zillow Offers likely to span several quarters. “The most difficult part of this decision is that it will impact many of our colleagues,” Barton said. “This is not something we take lightly. We are grateful for their efforts, and we are …