Zillow Real Estate Company
Zillow has established itself as the most significant and successful real estate marketplace on the Internet. It’s a key source of buyer and seller leads for real estate agents across the country from Massachusetts to Florida to Texas and California.
For prospective home buyers, its website provides accessible, easy-to-use real estate listings to peruse and research. Zillow’s success might be to many business initiatives and a lower cost to advertise and capture leads, but we might attribute it to:
- Large listings database: Zillow has a large database of properties, which can save buyers time searching.
- FSBO listings: Zillow allows sellers to list their properties directly on the site, which saves on agent fees.
- Pay-per-impression advertising: Zillow uses a pay-per-impression advertising model to attract leads.
- Premier Agent product: Zillow sells buyer leads to agents through its Premier Agent product.
- IDX feed: Zillow is a member of the National Association of Realtors, which gives it access to an IDX feed of listings from MLSs across the country.
For Realtors, Zillow’s lead generation program helps them gain visibility with millions of home buyers and home sellers. Its Premier Agent lead generation service for agents, teams, and brokers is accessible through both web and app interfaces. It’s purpose is to simplify the communication process between realtors and potential clients. However, it is a competitive marketplace, requiring online conversion and selling skills.
If you’re comparing Zillow to Realtor.com, let’s review Zillow’s potential benefits.
Consumer-Centric Experience
- Simplicity and Design: Zillow’s website and mobile app are intuitive, visually appealing, and designed for seamless navigation. Buyers and sellers can easily browse listings, estimate home values, and get a feel for the market.
- Zestimate Tool: Zillow’s Zestimate feature has been a game-changer for quick, free property estimates. It creates a starting point for discussion about a seller’s home value even if the estimates aren’t always perfect.
- Additional Features: Zillow extends its value to consumers by offering mortgage calculators, rent vs. buy tools, and neighborhood insights, creating an ecosystem that keeps users engaged beyond just browsing listings.
2. Marketing and Branding
- Massive Visibility: Zillow has consistently outspent Realtor.com on advertising, making its brand synonymous with online home shopping. They dominate TV, digital ads, and even social media campaigns.
- Brand Recognition: “Zillow” is almost a household name now. It’s become the default platform people think of when starting their home search, giving it a significant advantage over Realtor.com.
3. User Base and Traffic
- Market Domination: Zillow regularly pulls in significantly more monthly traffic than Realtor.com, giving it a larger audience to showcase listings and generate leads for agents.
- Network Effect: More users on Zillow lead to more data, more engagement, and more listings—creating a virtuous cycle that feeds its dominance.
4. Agent-Focused Features
- Premier Agent Program: Zillow invests heavily in tools for agents to generate leads and grow their business. This includes CRM systems, advertising opportunities, and options like the Flex Program that work well for agents with limited upfront budgets.
- Agent Reviews and Profiles: Zillow allows agents to build detailed profiles and collect buyer seller reviews, helping them build their Realtor brand to stand out in a crowded market.
5. Innovation and Expansion
- Beyond Listings: Zillow had expanded into areas like iBuying (through Zillow Offers), rentals, and new construction.
- Tech-Savvy Tools: Zillow was early to adopt 3D home tours, virtual tours, and AI-driven tools to improve the user experience. These innovations appeal to the tech-savvy consumer.
Why Zillow Beats Realtor.com Despite MLS Access
- Broader Appeal: Realtor.com may have MLS backing and strong ties with agents, but it hasn’t matched Zillow in consumer appeal and brand awareness.
- Data Accessibility: Zillow’s Zestimate and neighborhood insights provide a richer experience beyond just listing data.
- Agent Relationships: While Realtor.com leans on its MLS relationships, Zillow focuses more on direct services for agents, like lead generation, which many agents see as more valuable.
- National Brand vs. Industry Perception: Realtor.com often feels more “industry-focused,” while Zillow feels “consumer-first.” This difference has drawn a larger audience to Zillow.
Zillow’s History
Zillow was launched in 2006 by Rich Barton who also founded Expedia. His vision was inspired by the Internet and he wanted Zillow to be the Expedia of real estate. On July 20, 2011, the company began trading under the symbol “Z” on the Nasdaq exchange. Later the firm bought Rentjuice and Hotpads in 2012, StreetEasy in 2013, and then Trulia, a major competitor, in 2015 in a major $2.5 billion deal.
Like Realtor.com and Redfin and Trulia, the site features homes for sale. In a market that is desperate for housing, the Zillow brand and website attract an interested and engaged audience. Zillow has data on nearly 110 million homes across the United States.
The firm competes directly with Realtor.com however it enjoys twice as many visits, i.e., from Google search and has 5 times more page views, even though Realtor.com has 33% more homes for sale listed.

Zillow Group’s brands, affiliates and subsidiaries include Zillow, Zillow Premier Agent, Zillow Home Loans, Zillow Closing Services, Zillow Homes, Inc. Trulia, Out East, StreetEasy, HotPads, and ShowingTime.
Zillow Group’s foundation of trust is powering our next chapter: to build a seamless transaction experience for every customer — from ZillowGroup.com.
Today, the company is mostly known as a source/listing of homes for sale, rental housing, home loans, lead generation for real estate agents, and closing services.
News on Zillow
In June of 2021, Zillow launched neural Zestimate, a new model to help the Zestimate respond more accurately to the housing market, improving their median error rate to 6.9%.
In September 2022, Zillow Group launched ShowingTime+ to bring together leading industry software tools in a single, streamlined brand.
In March 2023, Zillow launched a new selling experience, giving home sellers the choice between a cash offer from Opendoor and the option to work with a Zillow Premier Agent.
Zillow Homes for Sale

The Zillow real estate listings are easy to understand with a map of your interested region in the left, with a two column listing of homes for sale. Of course, you can filter by price, home type, number of bedrooms, floor space, amenities and much more.
You’ll find homes listed by the major real estate brokerages including Compass Realty, Douglas Elliman, Sothebys, Coldwell Banker, Fortune Christie’s, BHHS EWM Realty, The Agency, RE/MAX, Willis Allen, Berkshire Hathaway, Engel & Volkers, Oppenheim Group and more.
Realtor is a website service featuring contact management, listings and sales tracking, appointment scheduling, marketing tools, document storage users can connect to the service via the Realtor mobile app.
Which is Better? Zillow or Realtor?
It might be said that Zillow is better for those trying to sell their home themselves, while Realtor almost always involves one of its member agents.
Zillow offers a better online experience and more visitors, whereas Realtor offers a more offline and risk free experience. Zillow offers the MLS database while presenting listings in a more interesting fashion to consumers. It’s Realtor/client communications service might be superior too, as Realtor’s prefer it to Realtor.com.
And using Zillow, younger homebuyers and sellers will like feel more engaged in the listing and selling of their property, or buying a home. Whether that translates to better sales results is difficult to quantify.
Zillow Stock Price
They enjoyed revenue of 1.96 billion USD in 2022. In the last 12 months, Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZG) share prices is up 56%, and their revenue grew by 30%. Learn more about stock quotes and check the stock market forecast for 2024.


As mortgage rates and the housing market returns to health, Zillow stands to dramatically improve its revenues as homeowners seek to sell their home, buyers search for their next home, and Realtors pay to reach them all.
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