All right. Thank you so much, everyone, for being here. My name is Matthew Cost from the Morgan Stanley U.S. Internet team. Thrilled to be joined by Jeremy Hofmann, CFO of Zillow. Thank you so much for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I have to quickly go through the disclosures. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your MS sales representative.
Will do.
With that out of the way, you know, to start things off, maybe let's talk about customer and agent pain points. Talk to us about some of the biggest ones that you run into in conversations with your customers and how Zillow is working to address those.
Yeah. Moving is tough. I think anybody that's gone through a move, whether it's a rental, you're trying to buy a home, you're trying to sell a home, it's pretty complicated. The mover often plays the project manager.
Mm-hmm.
We're trying to solve a lot of pain points for the mover consumer.
Mm-hmm.
That's through a variety of ways that come together in what we call the Housing Super App.
Mm-hmm.
and that's, you know, effectively our evolution from being a company that's known for dreaming and shopping to trying to be known for buying, selling, renting, financing.
Mm-hmm.
We look at each of those customer experiences and look to go at pain points along the way. It shows up in financing.
Mm-hmm.
In touring a home.
Mm-hmm.
Including getting a great agent, and then the entire rental experience as well.
Mm-hmm.
Along with more seller solutions on the sell side of selling a home.
Right.
Those are the consumer pain points that we are trying to solve. And then on top of that, for our how we build this app and this Housing Super App requires great partners.
Mm-hmm.
Those partners are primarily real estate agents.
Mm-hmm.
We're often delivering them software to make them more efficient. That's one big problem that they have.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, there can be times in which being a real estate agent can be inefficient.
Right.
Can we provide software to make them more efficient and also provide them great customers?
Mm-hmm.
Great potential customers, right? They wanna be out there in the field doing what they do best, which is helping people buy and sell homes. They don't wanna be wrangling a tour.
Mm-hmm.
So we provide software for them, and that delivers both benefit to them and benefit to consumers on the other side.
Mm-hmm. So sticking with that for one second.
Yeah.
When we think about some of those, you know, vectors like financing and like touring that you look at, correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of it is in service of trying to boost conversion. Are there areas within that where you find the biggest impact or that you're the most excited about in terms of driving towards that goal, or is that the right goal for us to think about?
I think the goal, yeah, so conversion does matter a lot.
Mm-hmm.
Number of customers coming through matters a lot, but conversion matters a lot. Again, going back to what do consumers want?
Mm-hmm.
If they're coming to us looking to connect with a real estate agent, they wanna buy.
Right.
Or they wanna sell, right?
Right.
So the better that we can allow them to do so.
Mm-hmm.
It's great. At the same time, real estate agents wanna work with the people that are most serious as well.
Mm-hmm.
So we do a whole bunch of lead qualification as a result of that. And we think we're fairly uniquely positioned to do so. All of this kinda hangs off the fact that we have the biggest brand audience and engagement, right? Our brand means a lot, and it's 3x the closest competitor of ours. We don't think that anyone else is as well situated to solve all of these problems because of the brand and engagement that we have today.
Right. All right. Let's talk about enhanced markets. So I think on the last earnings call, you talked about a goal of getting from nine enhanced markets today to 40 by the end of the year.
Yes.
So that's a major step up. Notably accelerated pace.
Yes.
Talk us through how you're planning to increase the pace of enhanced market rollouts and kind of what learnings you've taken from those first 9 that you're gonna apply now to the next 31.
Yeah. We laid out this strategy in early 2022.
Mm-hmm.
That first year of the strategy, a lot of it was really restrategizing, reprioritizing, reorganizing.
Mm-hmm.
And then 2023 was really a time for us to put new markets in, to put new products into markets.
Mm-hmm.
And see how they went.
Mm-hmm.
We spent a lot of our time in 2022 and 2023 really testing and iterating.
Mm-hmm.
The testing and iterating was on the product side in places like touring and financing, but it was also on go-to-market. How we interacted with real estate agents is new as well. As a result of that, we spent a lot of time trying to perfect the recipe.
Mm-hmm.
2024 is about us really starting to accelerate and scale.
Mm-hmm.
That's where you see us going from nine enhanced markets to 40 enhanced markets. We feel like we have a lot of the components of the recipe right.
Mm-hmm.
Now we can bring it to more markets out there.
Mm-hmm.
The way in which we feel comfortable there, one, we see the strategy working.
Mm-hmm.
So we put out an investor deck at the end of this past earnings that basically laid out all the different places in which we're seeing the strategy working. One really important one was we saw our transaction share in our oldest enhanced markets in Phoenix and Atlanta grow by 80% and 90% respectively over two years.
Mm-hmm.
Our transaction share goal is to grow by 100% over four.
Mm-hmm.
So you say, "Okay, that's starting to work pretty well.
Mm-hmm.
We then look at the next two oldest enhanced markets. We aggregated all those together.
Mm-hmm.
In another chart in this deck. It basically showed that we grew revenue per total transaction value.
Mm-hmm.
Over the previous 12 months by 50% throughout 2023.
Mm-hmm.
So two proof points where we say, "Look, we feel like we have the right products. We have the right go-to-market strategy. Of course, we're gonna learn more over time, but we generally feel pretty good about that. And it's working.
Mm-hmm.
In a way that we can see in the actual results.
Mm-hmm.
All systems go, let's start to get bigger and bigger, and go to 40 markets versus 9 in 2024.
Right. So maybe on enhanced markets just for one more second. I mean.
Yeah.
What, what is the impact of going from, you know, a regular market to an enhanced market? I feel like there's a lot of focus from investors; there has been historically on Flex.
Mm-hmm.
And people saying, "Oh, it's all about just going to Flex," but I, I think it's, it's more than that.
It is.
So what happens and what's the impact when you shift into an enhanced market?
Yeah. I mean, it's a completely different product experience.
Mm-hmm.
You're gonna see Zillow Home Loans show up in a different way.
Mm-hmm.
You're gonna get Real-Time Touring.
Mm-hmm.
You're gonna get more curated partner selection. That has nothing to do with monetization model. That's just we are being more thoughtful about who the partners that work with our customers are.
Mm-hmm.
And then we have additional selling solutions as well.
Mm-hmm.
Partnership with Opendoor, to be one that we may hit later. But all of those things come together in an experience that is far different than what the previous version of Zillow looked like.
Mm-hmm.
That is business model agnostic with respect to MBP versus Flex.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we're agnostic on monetization there. That's not really the driver. The driver is all these new products coming in, increasing the number of potential customers, and then increasing conversion.
Mm-hmm.
Increasing revenue per transaction.
Mm-hmm. Talk about the 6% goal in terms of share of transactions. That's something you've been talking about for a couple of years now.
Yeah.
Getting from 3%-6%. So how will what you're planning this year help you get there? Is it about rolling out those enhanced markets? Is it about rolling out broader product improvements? What are the drivers and milestones we should be watching to assess Zillow's progress towards that goal?
Yeah. It's some combination of both breadth and depth.
Mm-hmm.
It's getting deeper in existing markets and getting broader, i.e., more markets. It will be some combination of both of those that drive those transaction share gains. But where we feel confident is we look at the oldest markets.
Mm-hmm.
We say, "Wow, we're seeing these transaction share gains in these oldest markets." And when we look at the ones that we are taking online now.
Mm-hmm.
The same upper, up funnel and mid funnel metrics that we were tracking before you get to the transaction.
Mm-hmm.
Look good in those markets too. So we feel like we can start to draw a line that the success that we've seen in the older enhanced markets translate to these newer ones. And then we go deeper.
Mm-hmm.
We go broader. Ultimately, that translates itself from 3%-6% share by the end of 2025.
Got it. Maybe.
I think the one thing, sorry, one other thing I will say. That's not really the end for us.
Mm-hmm.
You know, if we level back up for what we think the opportunity for the company is, we are somewhere between 65%-70% of all audience share in the US in real estate.
Mm-hmm.
Zillow means a lot. It's 3x the size of any other, any of our competitors. It's more. Zillow is more Googled than the word real estate. Our brand, our traffic is 80%+ organic.
Mm-hmm.
It's very brand direct. We have very, very low reliance on SEM. So we sit there and say, "We, we, we come from this privileged, privileged position where we have so much brand engagement and audience and a small bit of transaction share." So 3%-6% would be a great mile marker and we'll be very proud of it. But the opportunity we think is broader. And we outline we've outlined that in a variety of ways. One that we most recently did is in this most recent investor deck, we showed a funnel that basically shows in our funnel in our funnel today, active, there's $30 billion of revenue to go get. Now, we've gotta go get it, and we gotta build, and we've gotta get deeper and broader, all the things that we've been talking about.
It gives us a lot of excitement about what could be well beyond the 2025 goals.
Mm-hmm. You talked about your share of traffic and just the mindshare you have with the American consumer in terms of real estate. I think that sets up really well to talk about competition. Because one thing that we hear a lot from investors, you probably hear the same, is a focus on, you know, new competitors coming into the space, buying traffic, investing really heavily in advertising, you know, trying to basically build a housing portal that competes directly with Zillow. So I guess what is your view of the competitive landscape? Do you think that's a fair thing for investors to be focused on? And if not, why not?
Yeah. To date, we're seeing no impact.
Mm-hmm.
We feel really well positioned.
Mm-hmm.
The reason we feel really well positioned is because we think the asset we've built at the top of the funnel.
Mm-hmm.
What Zillow is, is pretty differentiated and pretty defensible. You know, I'll say we at Zillow have long been business model agnostic and flexible. We will move around wherever we see fit. We've got a lot of different business models running through the company today. We have paid inclusion. We have ZHL, which gets paid, you know, when we're originating mortgages. We have applications for rentals. We have paid inclusion on the multifamily side. We have market-based pricing. We have flex. There we have software revenue all in various pockets. All to just say we've long been business model flexible. What we are completely inflexible on is ensuring that we are the biggest, most engaged, most beloved real estate space.
Mm-hmm.
So that is just a non-negotiable because we don't have the opportunity to do all the things we're trying to do if we don't have that leadership.
Yeah.
So that's kind of the start.
Mm-hmm.
And then from there, we do think the strategy and all the consumer and partner pain points that we're trying to solve is pretty unique. I don't think you would sit and talk to anyone else in the category going after the same thing that we're trying to do. And it's because we think we have the opportunity to do it because of who we are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's talk about rentals. I mean, so I think the rental segment makes up less than 20% of Zillow's revenue today. But the segment's growing really strongly, especially over the past couple of quarters. I think it was north of 30% for the past few. You know, you've also talked in the past at Zillow about the importance of renters being future buyers. So how do you think about the durability and importance of the rental segment?
Yeah. And it's actually 20% now.
Yeah.
Like, just, just crossed that threshold. We're quite proud of it. It's a It's a really interesting business. It's one that we think is quite durable. And we built it a little bit differently than I think anybody else has.
Mm-hmm.
We build businesses kinda the same way in a lot of often, which is, let's try to find as much supply as possible.
Mm-hmm.
And then let's build a lot of engaging consumer demand products. And let's do that using product and R&D, right? That is we are, you know, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink and the team, they are builders at heart, right? They, they've done this at Expedia. They're doing it at Zillow. We've been doing it at Zillow. And that just gives you the backdrop for how we thought about the rentals business. The rentals segment in the U.S. is different than the residential segment. There's no MLS organizing structure.
Mm-hmm.
We see that as our opportunity.
Mm-hmm.
We should be the organizing structure. We should be the place that the marketplace actually is in rentals. And we went after the opportunity with that in mind. So we built what we think is really unique listings and number of listings on the single-family side first. Not the big properties, big multifamily properties. We started at the single-family.
Mm-hmm.
Because we thought that will get the flywheel spinning.
Right.
We'll have more listings. We'll have more organic demand, and we'll ultimately have more traffic. That has played out. We have the most listings, and we're number one in traffic. We now set our eyes on: let's grow multifamily properties. And that's where the bigger spend is. So it's an interesting opportunity both for the supply. Let's get more multifamily buildings out there. And then also, it is quite interesting, with respect to monetization. It's just that's where the bulk of the spend in the category today happens to be with those multifamily operators who are looking to find new customers to lease apartments.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we have grown really, really well. So we were in on multifamily, we grew 52% year-over-year in Q4. That's very, very fast compared to anything you look at. And that's the focus for 2024 is grow that multifamily property base. We were 37,000 properties at the end of Q4. We are now 39,000. So we've added 2,000 properties in these two months. And then interestingly, announced last night that we're doing an exclusive partnership with Realtor.com.
Mm-hmm.
Where we will be providing them their multifamily content.
Mm-hmm.
They were in various partnerships and their own direct efforts in previous years. They've now turned those off, and we are the exclusive provider.
Mm-hmm.
That's great, right? That's one of those where it's a win for us, a win for them. For them, they're able to build what we think will be a pretty high-margin revenue opportunity. And for us, we get to show up at a property management company's office and say, "Hey, you know us. You know Zillow. You're gonna get ads. You're gonna get leads. You're gonna get customers from Zillow, from Trulia, from HotPads, and now Realtor.com too with 70 million unique users a month." So that's a pretty interesting proposition for a property management company. And then it also helps build that flywheel even more on the rental side where we are building supply, we're building demand, and ultimately see a really interesting business opportunity well into the future.
Mm-hmm. Back on the residential side, you've, you've talked about touring a few times, you know, over the course of this presentation. I think it's, it's a very important topic for investors. So if we think about ShowingTime as sort of like an OpenTable, for, for home touring, you know, there's, there's an opportunity for strong, network effects among consumers and agents, optionality for, for high-margin revenue streams going forward. But remind us what that monetization model looks like now and how you see that evolving in the near to medium term.
Yeah. So ShowingTime is a company we bought in late 2021. It powers 80%+ of all tours in the country. Why is that interesting? One, scheduling a tour in residential real estate is really hard. You have four different calendars to wrangle. You have the buyer, the buyer's agent, the seller, the seller's agent.
Mm-hmm.
ShowingTime had been at it for 20 years, building what we think is actually a really good network effect business. We bought it with that in mind. It's beneficial to us because it is good software, subscription revenue. So that is the business model today. It also adds value because it underpins all that we're doing in Real-Time T ouring, which drives value to Premier Agent via more connections and better conversion.
Mm-hmm.
So it's mutually beneficial in that we've added software revenue, and it also helps drive the Premier Agent revenue.
Mm-hmm.
And it sits within a suite of software tools that we provide to the industry. So going back to the first answer. Great customer experiences, great consumer experiences, great partner software. Those are kinda the two, the two main things. ShowingTime's a great example of that. It makes agents' lives easier. They don't have to wrangle the tour anymore. We do that for them via software. And the customers, the consumers that show up to them are more well qualified because they've gone through this Real-Time Touring experience.
Mm-hmm.
It sits in a part of our company that's amongst a number of software tools that we provide to the industry. So we have ShowingTime. We have Dotloop, which is effectively a DocuSign but solely for real estate agents. And then Follow Up Boss, which we acquired, late last year, which is the leading CRM provider for our Premier Agents.
Mm-hmm.
And I think when I think about longer term, you know, nothing to say today other than we're starting to get to a place where, you know, we're providing a lot of software to the industry. And we think there's the makings of an industry platform type solution over time that allows not only Premier Agents to do quite well with us but also industry writ large. Now, that's not on the radar today or tomorrow. But over time, the more software we are providing to the real estate industry, the more we're making their lives better. We think there are platform type opportunities.
When we think about the way that Follow Up Boss or ShowingTime, what they do for agents, would it be fair to say that step one of that is basically being an indispensable part of the process or the workflow for agents that work with you now?
Yeah. Yeah. And there is a component of the broader real estate industry.
Right.
Both Dotloop and ShowingTime have 1 million-plus agents using on a day-to-day basis. Follow Up Boss is a bit smaller than that. Within our Premier Agent base, they are by far the most widely used software provider. The optionality and opportunity both for Zillow consumers, Zillow Premier Agents, and then the industry, there, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's going on.
Got it. I think on the 4Q call, you know, you spoke to plans for increasing sales headcount. So.
Yep.
Is there a particular area, you know, where we'll see more investments than others, things that you would call out there?
Yeah. Maybe I'll just zoom out on cost structure first.
Of course.
So that is always, always helpful. We have roughly $1.6 billion of EBITDA expenses pre-SBC.
Mm-hmm.
That's effectively our run rate at the end of 2023. Of that cost base, $1 billion of it is in fixed in what we call fixed. I've been very public on this, and I'll say it here too. We feel quite good about our fixed resourcing to achieve our transaction share goals through 2025.
Mm-hmm.
This won't be the cost structure forever, but we feel like we're well invested to hit that 3%-6% range.
Mm-hmm.
And we can get great leverage off of that base. Beyond that, the rest, the other key component of the cost structure is variable. Variable is roughly 25%-30% of our cost base. And that is sales, sales support, and other G&A headcount. And then the last component is advertising and marketing, which we think of as separate and distinct from fixed and variable. We will dial that up and down depending on the opportunities we see fit. Marketing is an important part of our mix. It's not the most important part. The most important part for us is driving great product. And then marketing really can supercharge it at times. With respect to 2024, we have said we think the housing market will be flat-ish for the year.
We will grow our revenue double digits accelerating throughout the year with the majority of that revenue coming from our new growth initiatives, which is a great thing for us to be able to say. Like, we've spent two years really building. Now, we're starting to or we expect to see contributions from the growth initiatives that we've been talking about really start to hit our P&L.
Mm-hmm.
And we are staffing up in sales to make sure that we grow, right? And the vast majority of the sales effort that's being staffed up is really in rentals, Zillow Home Loans, and Listing Showcase. So we think long term, the margin structure's really, really attractive but will be ultimately driving double digits revenue growth and modest margin expansion as we take advantage of the growth opportunities we see in 2024.
Mm-hmm. So I think you reiterated or brought back a 45% long-term margin target at the quarter, which is something you've talked about in the past.
Yes.
But you brought it up again at the fourth quarter. So maybe I think there was a lot of really helpful stuff about how you see the TAM and, you know, the drivers of leverage. But maybe, focusing on that margin target that you gave at 4Q, walk us through how you get there.
Yeah. So it would go back to that cost structure in place, right? We have, you know, fixed is a high percentage of our overall cost base, which is great. It means we can drive leverage over time. And for folks that have followed us closely, you've seen when we've outperformed on the revenue side, it tends to fall through to EBITDA as well. You know, longer term, we like the shape of the cost structure. We like that margin profile. The big difference today versus when we put it out two years ago is we put those numbers out in an existing home sales environment of 6.1 million homes sold. Today, we're in the low fours. So we've invested through that, and margins have come down accordingly. But as we get to a more normal cycle, we think that is a really, really good margin target for us.
Got it. So, one thing that's been a huge focus for investors over the past couple of months. It's been percolating in the background for a long time, but the lawsuits against NAR.
Yep.
There's a lot of headlines there basically saying there are these challenges to the way the business is done in the residential real estate industry. Rightly or wrongly, that's the perception that many people have. I guess remind us and I think you gave some good detail on this on the earnings call.
Yeah.
But remind us in the room now Zillow's view on how this might impact the industry and your business?
Yeah. Our view hasn't changed. So I'd say kinda first and foremost, our industry and consumer principles are grounded in three things. One is free and fair access to all real estate listings for consumers and for real estate agents. We think the marketplace in the U.S. with the MLS is a really good marketplace, right? You see a lot more of the inventory in the U.S. than any other place in the world. And that's because the MLS exists. So that's principle one. We think that's really, really important. Principle two is independent representation. So there is this concept of dual agency that gets bandied about, in the real estate industry from time to time. It's where a real estate agent represents both the buyer and the seller. We think that's not the right answer. Buyers deserve independent representation. Sellers deserve independent representation.
Not dissimilar from if you're gonna sell a company. You wouldn't have the same investment bank represent you on the buy side and the sell side. We feel that way in, in real estate as well. And then the third is, fair and negotiable commissions. So those are our principles. We've been quite clear on those. We have an advocacy page. We talk to consumers about them. We talk to real estate agents about them. We think the industry machinations are obviously loud. How they end up playing out, we don't yet know. And I think it'll take some time to play out. But I think things are narrowing a bit in that the Department of Justice put out a statement of interest in mid-February that basically the key the key clause to us was that they still believe that sellers and/or seller agents can pay buy-side commissions.
Mm-hmm.
That, to us, is critical for the real estate industry functioning the way that it does today.
Mm-hmm.
Because there are a lot of really challenging knock-on effects that would happen if that was for some reason broken apart.
Mm-hmm.
Once that came out, we felt like the potential scenarios have narrowed.
Mm-hmm.
and then how we think about it is in a world in which there is more dispersion.
Mm-hmm.
Of commissions on the buy side, we've been orienting ourselves around folks that do the best in their particular markets.
Right.
So we can make a pretty clear argument in our heads that we and our real estate agents that work with us in Premier Agent should take share.
Mm-hmm.
And then, you know, in a world like that, folks like us providing great customers and providing great customer experiences should be really well positioned. Beyond that, how it plays out, when it plays out, it's hard to tell. But we are kinda sticking in those principles to make sure that we feel really well positioned. And I will harken back to, you know, how the dollars flow in the industry have changed over time. We've been in the industry for a long period of time. We've never had a hard time changing business models as needed. What we do care most about is build best customer experiences, make sure we have biggest brand audience engagement, and build great tools for agents. If we do all that, we should be well positioned based on where we are today.
Got it. Just for my own edification 'cause I think it's a really important point, but I wanna make sure I'm following it correctly.
Yeah.
Do you think based on what we heard from DOJ in February, maybe it's less likely and correct me if I'm interpreting this wrong?
Sure.
That we'll see the sellers agents, it's less likely that we'll see them be prohibited from splitting commissions with buyers agents?
Yeah. I think the way to think about it is they could have said something more.
Mm-hmm.
What that could have been was buyers have to come out of pocket to pay the commission.
Right.
We think that would have been really harmful.
Okay.
Like, that hurts the people that need housing most, right? And the average American consumer is working to get that down payment. Now, if you ask them to come out of pocket again.
Mm-hmm.
And then they don't have representation, like, that, that could really go poorly. Department of Justice understands that and was quite clear on pages 20 and 21 of the statement of interest that they recognize that and they are completely comfortable with seller, agents, and/or sellers paying that buy-side commission.
Got it. Let's talk about the topic maybe of the past 12 months.
Yes.
But still going strong, this conference is AI. So talk about how you're using AI today on the platform and where do you see this, you know, the biggest areas of incremental implementation to move the needle going forward?
Yeah. AI is not new to us. Generative AI, new. But we, you know, we launched the site in February of 2006 with Zestimate. That was rudimentary AI back then. So AI has been rooted in our culture for a long period of time.
Mm-hmm.
It wasn't one of those where early 2023, ChatGPT started taking off, and we were like, "Oh my God. What is this?" We had, you know, a good number of people that were already working on consumer experiences using AI. So today, it shows up in search personalization. It shows up on Listing Showcase. The 3D media, rich media floor plan technology that we've built is AI-powered. We'll continue to think about ways in which it can better improve the consumer experience. And then I'd say where our eyes have opened, specifically with the generative AI use case is what it can do for both operator. So operator, I say when I say operator, I mean agent and loan officer for us. Can it make them more efficient? Going back to the two principles. Can it make them more efficient and then also employees?
So nothing more to share beyond that. But we're organized in those three places, and we have a team of people working on consumer. We have a team of people working on operator, and we have a team of people that are thinking about employee efficiency. And we think there's long term, there's a lot that can be done in the business that we're in.
Mm-hmm. No, that makes sense. I mean, from operations perspective and from a product perspective, it's, it's very clear how you could be leveraging AI. I wonder if.
We think so too.
I wonder if there are any risks that you internally think about or are solving for, as you think about the way that people interact with your product. And one thing that comes to mind for me, but I'd be curious if there's anything that you disagree with or that you would add to it is, you know, in a world where maybe I have an AI assistant, and I say, "Hey, find me a list of houses, you know, in a certain market and what they're going for," could that be an impact to the org, you know, the direct traffic that you have? I mean, are there things that you're thinking about that you're trying to solve for that AI could change that on the risk side as well?
Yeah. I think we're always, if we go back to one thing to take away from this session is the sun, moon, stars, earth for us is big consumer audience and brand. So we're always thinking about ways in which that can be disrupted. We feel pretty well, we feel like it's more opportunity than threat for us specifically. And that's because real estate requires a level of visualization and a real level of depth that is unique than versus other categories. That being said, you know, we think there are ways in which the consumer experience can improve via AI. And we're thinking about ways in which to do that today but not necessarily one where we see a bunch of threats.
The thing that we have to be really, really thoughtful about, though, is, you know, housing has a long history of not being entirely fair. And AI we put out AI ethical standards around fair housing, and we're very, very thoughtful about that. Like, if we're gonna be the biggest brand in this category, we gotta make sure that the way in which the experience works works for all people.
Mm-hmm. That's very important. You talked about partnerships before, and you referenced Opendoor, who we actually had at the conference earlier this week. And the two of you have, I think, an important partnership on the iBuying side. Maybe focusing on that partnership first.
Yeah.
Talk about the benefits that you see from that, and how you think it could evolve over time.
They've been great.
Mm-hmm.
You know, that's a really, really good team. And I think the partnership you know, we had competed for a bit of time there, and we very quickly snapped to and became partners within like a 6- or 9-month period.
Mm-hmm.
And they've been great since then. I think we're, you know, we're in 45-50 markets at this point with them together. And I think it's beneficial for them because it's a great source of customer demand. I think it fits really well for their business model because, you know, I'll let them talk about why they like the model, but I think it works really well for them. For us, it allows us to offer more selling options.
Mm-hmm.
The consumer experience on site is get a cash offer.
Mm-hmm.
Somebody clicks that button, comes to a Zillow Advisor, and that Zillow Advisor says, "Hey, you can list with a Premier Agent. Great way to do, do it if you wanna go the traditional route. Or you can get a cash offer from Opendoor." For us, we wanna be the brand that allows people to have as many options as possible and be the advisor along the way, right? Our Housing Super App has helped more people move. So it sets us up really well there. And if a consumer decides to sell to Opendoor or sell with us, we're happy either way because it means consumer's happy, and we're making money in, in either of the cases.
Mm-hmm. So, I mean, when I think about Opendoor or, or Realtor.com, which you mentioned a very recent announcement.
Yep.
You know, these are from my perspective, you know, kind of a big deal because you know, these are in and of themselves, you know, big brands in the real estate landscape that are choosing to work with Zillow. I guess how important are those partnerships to your strategy, and how are they coming about? Are you identifying these and going out and starting those conversations?
Yeah. I mean, Opendoor, Realtor.com, we work a lot with Redfin too.
Mm-hmm.
We power Redfin's new construction listings. Like, we have a big database of new construction homes, and Redfin, you know, takes those from us too.
Mm-hmm.
We've been quite comfortable that, look, there's gonna be moments in which all of us fiercely compete. And then there are other parts of the business where you find win-wins.
Mm-hmm.
I think that's probably the most important thing is I've learned this in these partnerships and having negotiated these. It's gotta be a win for both companies, right?
Mm-hmm.
So if we can find the win for both companies, we're all, you know, mature enough to know that, look, there's gonna be some fierce competition in some of these places. But in other places, we can help each other.
Mm-hmm.
You know, the Redfin deal, the Opendoor deal, this Realtor.com deal, they're all win-wins.
Mm-hmm.
So those have the makings of things that can be long-lasting regardless of if we're competing in some other part of the business.
Mm-hmm. Got it. So maybe, maybe we'll close kind of with a with a market-level question.
Yeah.
So there's a lot of focus from investors on, on interest rates, obviously, 'cause that's had a very clear impact on the amount of homes available for sale. Not so much on home prices but certainly on, on, you know, the, the level of transactions in the market overall. Do you have a view at Zillow on what rate levels matter for transaction volume to pick up? And, you know, is that even the metric that you look at internally? What are the milestones that you're following? 'Cause I suspect the focus on interest rates probably is more on the investor side of the table than on the manager side of the table.
I think that's fair. It's also like, I'm not an interest rate expert, so I try to just operate help operate the business. There are a couple factors. I think first and foremost, you know, we called for a flat-ish housing market this upcoming year.
Mm-hmm.
We think we're gonna grow double digits, and we're gonna accelerate revenue throughout that period of time. What we can control, we feel good about.
Mm-hmm.
What happens with the housing market, I think I try to zoom back. I do this with investors. I do it with our employees too.
Mm-hmm.
Like, we've got a bunch of employees that have never seen a housing market like this.
Right.
They're working at Zillow, and they're, "What's gonna happen?" I'm like, "Look, it's okay. Like, we're gonna be all right." So I like to think about, okay, over a 10-year horizon.
Mm-hmm.
Is housing gonna be a growth industry? I think so, right? If you look over the last 50 years, it's grown 6% on average. So we're in a growth industry that happens to be bumping along the cyclical bottoms. What frees that up will be some combination of things. I can't tell you. If I had the magic ball, I'd, I'd tell you, and we'd, we, we'd be doing something else than sitting on the stage. But I think we look at survey data. We do big surveys, behavioral science-type surveys. And one thing we see is the amount of people the number of people that are thinking about selling in the next three years is ticking up.
Mm-hmm.
So it was 15-ish%, for during the pandemic time. The last few years, that's ticked up to in the mid-20s%.
Mm-hmm.
That's an interesting data point. On the same side, we go and survey prospective buyers, and a lot of them, again, behavioral science. The question we've been asking them is, "At what interest rate are you ready to get off the sidelines?
Mm-hmm.
A year, year and a half ago, it was 5%.
Mm-hmm.
A year ago, it was 5.5. Now it's 6. Like, behavioral science starts to sorta like behavioral economics, behavioral science starts to work in. Like, people have to move.
Mm-hmm.
So I think those dynamics are interesting for us, right? Do I know the exact rate in which we in which everything kinda frees up? Not necessarily. But I also think about the fact that 40% of all homes in this country don't have a mortgage.
Mm-hmm.
It's not that it always blows my mind. The reality is that's very much because you have a lot of baby boomers who have been in homes for a long period of time and have paid off their mortgage. When I think about all that and the fact that there is a growth industry out there that we've seen for a long period of time, I'm not too worried so long as we execute and grow through it. When I think about the opportunity that we have, we are bouncing along the bottoms, it feels like, of turnover rate, housing turnover rate in a growth industry. That could be a potential tailwind over time. We are introducing a whole bunch of new products that we think drive revenue that haven't been in the product suite before, and we're doing it with cost discipline.
That's a pretty interesting time to be at the company and one that I think we as employees are super excited about.
Great note to close on. Jeremy, thank you so much.
Yeah. Thank you.