Zillow Real Estate Company

The company known as Zillow enjoys having the real estate website with the most traffic.

That would surprise most home buyers and sellers, but the truth is, Zillow has deliberately built a very strong presence in the real estate market and has embraced the Internet to serve buyers and sellers.

The Company offers an impressive range of service including its innovative Zestimate home value estimation service. That tool answered the question many buyers had “what is the value of that house?” They’ve improved it recently using AI.

That feature and Zillow’s strength drew the ire of millions of MLS agents who felt Zillow was taking their clientelle away from them. And while there were many predictions of Zillow going out of business, the truth is the opposite.

The company was focused on delivering more value for consumers than Realtors were willing to. Hence their business flourished.

Currently the company has huge revenues but is losing money. The company’s stock has a strong negative price earnings ratio. Yet investors aren’t deterred because the real estate/housing market is in a serious funk right now with most real estate investors waiting for the next boom to appear.

If it does, Zillow stands to gain, and perhaps see its price return to record heights. Will it beat Apple, Google, Tesla or Bitcoin as a major profitable investment choice? You’ll need to dig in deeper into their financials to gauge whether they will cut spending and harvest huge growing profits in 2025.

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 vs Realtor. Screenshot courtesy of remarkable.com

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 launches 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, whereas Realtor offers a more offline and risk free experience. 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.

However, Zillow has much more visitor traffic and buyers may feel they can acquire a home cheaper and sell for more via Zillow.

Using Zillow, you won’t have pay FSBO listing fees and they do not charge commission fees. You’ll still have to pay the buyer’s agent fee. Zillow makes its earnings on fees to real estate agents for referrals (Zillow Premier).

Is that sufficient to earn as much as Realtor.com and its agents make in commissions?

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.

Barchart’s analysts give Zillow a strong buy rating

CNN’s stock analysts give Zillow a hold rating, with a high price forecast of $65, and a low forecast of $30 in 12 months. If you believe the housing market will rebound in 2025, then Zillow might be a great stock to own. If there is a housing crash due to persistent inflation and high mortgage rates, then Zillow might be more risky.

It is an innovative, assertive and resilient company and likely one worth buying into, and perhaps to use their online homes for sale service.