What Is Zillow Group’s End Game, You Ask? Here’s Our Answer

As I talk to real estate agents and brokers the same basic question comes up fairly regularly: What is Zillow's mission? What exactly is the end game? What is it that Zillow Group is trying to do?

Fundamentally, the answers to all of these questions can be found in our mission statement:

'Marketplace' is the part of the mission that sometimes causes people to scratch their heads. The word 'marketplace' is key to understanding how we view our place in the real estate industry. So what, exactly, is a home-related marketplace in the context of our mission statement?

The book definition of marketplace is simple:

One way to understand a marketplace would be to walk through Seattle's Pike Place Market, one of the oldest and most famous marketplaces in the U.S. We use this analogy often, as Pike Place lies literally a block away from Zillow's headquarters in downtown Seattle.

If you've never been to Pike Place, imagine booth after booth lined up for two city blocks selling all sorts of goods and services — fresh produce, flowers, clothes, bakeries, restaurants, household goods, arts and crafts. You name it, you can probably find it in Pike Place Market.

Pike Place provides the physical infrastructure (think space, tables, lights, electricity, display cases, cash registers, etc.) that allow all the merchants to display their wares and services in a way that consumers can easily look through their inventories, connect with the supplier, and purchase goods and services.

Zillow, Trulia and StreetEasy offer the online equivalent of the marketplace's physical infrastructure. We provide a place for agents and brokers to display their 'inventory' — that is real estate listings — and expose that inventory to the consumers — that is home buyers and sellers — visiting the marketplace. We provide advertising and software tools for the merchants (i.e., agents) to be more efficient, reach more consumers and sell more inventory.

A traditional marketplace needs experts behind the tables who can explain the benefits and features of the products, services and inventory they are offering for sale. Similarly, Zillow's sites connect experts with consumers who can help them understand their offerings, and how they can buy them.

Of course, those experts on Zillow Group sites are the agents and brokers who know their inventory (i.e., listings), know the ins and outs of a complicated process (i.e., buying and selling real estate), and can help consumers visiting the marketplace make good decisions and purchases.

The importance of the consumer

A marketplace could be filled with all sorts of excellent inventory and services for sale. But if no one visits the marketplace, it might as well not exist. Imagine Pike Place if there were no consumers visiting, looking at the various items for sale or talking to the merchants. There would be no reason for the marketplace to exist.

Putting the consumer first, creating positive experiences for them, offering goods and services and consultations with experts is what attracts consumers to the marketplace and makes it vibrant, active and powerful — for both consumers and merchants.

This is why you'll hear Zillow Group leadership and employees say that we are consumer-focused — the consumer is our 'North Star.' We, and you, are in business ultimately to satisfy consumers’ real estate needs and help them in the often tedious, always expensive and frequently misunderstood process of buying or selling a home.

This is not intended to minimize the role of the agent/broker in the real estate marketplace. Quite the contrary, because without the agent 'behind the tables,' there would be no place for the consumer to shop and seek out expert advice.

How Zillow Group is building a consumer-focused marketplace

It takes more than inventory to build a vibrant marketplace. We do extensive research on consumer behavior and that research has demonstrated that consumers have a wide variety of needs and wants. We live in an increasingly 'instant demand' economy; it’s why things like ride-sharing, meal prep services, music streaming and Amazon Prime near-instant deliveries are as popular as they are.

Clearly, buying a home is more complicated and expensive than opening an app and getting a ride, but today's on-demand economy is driving a lot of business decisions. This shift is spilling over from simple things, like getting a ride, to more complex transactions, like real estate.

In order to appeal to the largest possible online audience, Zillow Group has a 'multi-brand' strategy. The graphic below demonstrates how this multi-brand strategy benefits value for both the consumer and the real estate professional:

Consumer demand and research has led to the introduction of new online marketplaces and features on Zillow Group sites. We launched Agent Reviews in 2010 to help consumers have more information when selecting a potential agent. In February 2016, Video Walkthroughs were introduced to give home shoppers additional rich content to allow them a better view into available properties.

More recently, Zillow introduced Zillow Offers. Homeowners in select cities can skip the hassle and sell directly to Zillow.

Zillow Group’s all-in bet: the marketplace needs agents and brokers

Attracting tens of millions of consumers to our websites is no simple task. It takes developers, marketers, engineers, public relations, customer support and more. All that effort is for naught however if there are no experts available to assist that consumer audience. It'd be like Pike Place Market having no one to help the throng of visitors actually buy something.

While Zillow Group provides software and tools for both consumers and agents alike (things like saved searches, email alerts of new listings, free training for agents, an agent app for lead management, transaction management via dotloop and more) those won’t replace the consumers’ need to speak with an expert.

Enter agents and brokers — the experts in the Zillow home-related marketplace. They are who the home shoppers reach out to with questions and for help wading through the often-complicated real estate transaction.

Without all of the components of this marketplace — the consumers, inventory, and real estate professionals — it can't work. But when you combine all these components together, you've got a large, trusted, vibrant marketplace where home buyers and sellers can be connected to  real estate professionals.

We’re all-in on developing and growing this marketplace. We’re working to build better technology to serve consumers and agents better. We’re betting everything on the fact that home buyers and sellers need real estate experts which will generate more transactions and commissions and you’ll reinvest some of that on ads to bring in more business.

The marketplace won’t thrive without you. It’s that simple.