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Zillow's Steady Progress In Winning Real Estate
Zillow is winning in the biggest single asset class in the world.
Travis Hoium
May 19, 2025
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Slowly but surely, Zillow $Z ( ▼ 0.15% ) has become one of the companies building a 10x business in the Asymmetric Portfolio. The “Super App” strategy to become the go-to place for housing searchers (for sale and rentals) is working, and competitors are capitulating.
CoStar is reconsidering its investment in Homes.com, real estate agent groups are signing on to Zillow’s listing transparency efforts after trying to cut Zillow out by privately listing homes, and Redfin is leaning on Zillow to provide rental listings.
Supply and demand are aggregating to Zillow, and that’s what we want to see.
The Housing Super App
In any Zillow earnings report, we want to see three things:
Growing share of “for sale” revenue
Growth in mortgages
Growth in rentals
We got all three in Q1 2025.
For Sale
Residential revenue overall is held back by a slow housing market that may be here for a while. But the trends are moving in the right direction.
We also get small tidbits about Zillow outgrowing the market, which are showing that share is up and the take rate is increasing.
For Sale revenue grew 8% year over year to $458 million in Q1, above the residential real estate industry’s year-over-year total transaction value growth of 3% as reported by NAR and 6% according to industry data tracked and estimated by Zillow. On a trailing 12-month basis, For Sale revenue per total transaction value at the end of Q1 was 10.2 basis points, compared with 9.7 basis points for the same period in 2024.
I wouldn’t call these blowout numbers, but unless we get a low interest rate environment again, small wins will do.
In mortgages, you can see more success in attracting buyers to a more holistic solution. Zillow has said that most buyers start by looking for a mortgage, so if the company can win that business, it’ll be big for the rest of the Super App strategy because they may choose moving services, insurance, and more.
For sale isn’t going to be a massive growth business, but we are seeing Zillow do better than competitors, and that’s enough for now.
Rentals
What’s been incredibly impressive is rentals. Revenue was up 33% to $129 million, and management expects more growth ahead.
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