Zillow bets on pre-marketing to unlock new growth

Zillow Group started off 2026 with a strong financial performance in the first quarter of the year, recording an 18% annual increase in revenue to $708 million and a net income of $46 million, up from $8 million in Q1 2025. 

Chief financial officer Jeremy Hofmann attributes this strong performance to Zillow’s consistent execution of its strategy. 

“We’re helping people go beyond searching and finding and really starting to buy, sell, rent and close,” Hofmann told HousingWire. “So, we’re quite pleased with that and it shows up in the numbers.”

Despite a continued slow housing market and rising mortgage rates, Zillow’s residential revenue grew 8% annually to $450 million, while rental revenue grew 42% year-over-year to $183 million and mortgage revenue rose 56% from a year prior to $64 million.

Zillow attributed the annual boost in residential revenue to growth across Preferred, Zillow Showcase, the company’s suite of agent software tools, and the company’s New Construction marketplace, while the mortgage revenue jump was boosted by a 96% annual increase in purchase loan origination volume to $1.5 billion. According to Zillow, Zillow Home Loans is now a top-25 purchase lender in the country.

“All of this growth is proof points to us that the strategy is working well and we’re executing quite nicely and that we’re able to grow regardless of housing market conditions, which we’ve done now for three plus years and expect to continue to do,” Hofmann said. 

A new part of Zillow’s strategy this quarter is Zillow Preview, its pre-marketing offering for listings. In the seven weeks since the product first launched, Zillow has signed more than 60 brokerages onto Zillow Preview. 

“So many brokerages see value in public pre-marketing, and coming to Zillow is an opportunity to give value to everyone versus some others in the market that are gating inventory, putting inventory behind a registration wall, saying you have to sign up with a brokerage to see this inventory and Preview is the antidote to that. It is public exposure, and that is what people want,” Hofmann said.

Hofmann cited a recent Harris Poll survey that found that nearly 9 in 10 Americans would be interested in viewing pre-listed homes online if they were buying a home, and 85% of soon-to-be sellers said they’d be more likely to hire an agent who can pre-market their home to the broadest online audience.

Although the product is still in its early days, Hofmann said Zillow expects the product will be “incremental to the business” moving forward. 

As Zillow looks to the future, given today’s technology environment, AI is obviously front and center. As an early adopter of AI via the Zestimate, Zillow believes its experience with AI technology uniquely positions it to lead the housing industry into this new AI-focused chapter. 

“AI has been a core part of Zillow since its founding. The Zestimate was rudimentary AI and that was what we launched on 20 years ago,” Hofmann said. 

According to Hofmann, there is evidence of how AI is impacting Zillow’s business and its customers throughout its Q1 earnings, including a 70% increase in the Follow Up Boss user base, the nearly 100% annual increase in purchase loan origination volume, which Hofmann attributed in part to AI investments used to improve the experience for both the home buyer and the loan officer, and AI-mode, an AI assistant that takes buyers from search to close, which Hofmann said the company launched to 5% of users this quarter.

“I think the technology is still nascent versus where it’s going to be three, five, seven, and 10 years from now,” Hofmann said. “So, we are investing heavily as a result. There’s a lot that we have done, here’s a lot that shows up in our results today and we do feel like we’re just scratching the surface because we do think the technology gets more and more powerful. And the advantages we have with our brand, with our content, with our context, and our integration strategy put us in the pole position to really lead the way in real estate.”