Zillow Group (NASDAQ:Z) used its Investor Summit for AI to outline how the company is deploying artificial intelligence across the home shopping and transaction process, emphasizing that AI is “an accelerator” to its strategy rather than a disruptive threat. Executives and product leaders highlighted Zillow’s scale, proprietary data and integrated software tools for both consumers and real estate professionals as key advantages in building AI-driven experiences that help users move from browsing to action.
AI as an extension of Zillow’s end-to-end transaction strategy
CEO Jeremy Wacksman framed AI as the latest “change everything” technology shift, similar to the mobile revolution, arguing Zillow is positioned to lead AI’s impact on real estate. Wacksman said Zillow’s strategy has remained consistent across technology waves: build products and services “consumers and professionals want and need.”
Wacksman also pointed to Zillow’s professional footprint, saying agents who use one of Zillow’s products touch 80% of U.S. transactions, and Zillow helps fill more than 60% of rental listings. He highlighted Zillow’s integrated product set, including ShowingTime, Follow Up Boss and dotloop, and said connecting touring, CRM, financing and transaction data creates differentiated context for AI.
Unified “intent layer” and the regulatory complexity of real estate
Chief product and technology leaders emphasized that Zillow is building “at the core” of real estate rather than at the “edge.” Cynthia Taylor said Zillow’s approach depends on unifying fragmented systems and workflows in a complex, regulated environment where licenses are required for certain types of guidance. She argued generic AI systems may be constrained in answering questions that “start to look like agency or fiduciary guidance,” including valuation and affordability questions.
Taylor described Zillow’s product strategy as creating “one shared version of a mover’s intent” for consumers—persistent identity, evolving affordability profile, preferences and next steps—and “one shared version of the deal” for professionals across Zillow’s ecosystem, including a unified identity layer, deal object, contact model and document system. She said this foundation is designed so AI “does not have to guess at what’s happening” in a transaction.
Rentals: pushing beyond listings into applications, leases and payments
Michael Sherman described rentals as a “microscope” on fragmentation, noting the absence of a central MLS-like repository. He said Zillow’s rentals strategy began with aggregating inventory and has expanded toward a transaction-enabled marketplace that covers search, messaging, tours, applications, lease signing and payments.
Sherman cited several operating metrics and product features discussed during the summit:
- He said there are roughly three times as many renter moves annually as for-sale moves, and 64% of renters say they looked at homes for sale during their rental journey.
- He said Zillow’s rentals business is expected to grow about 30% year-over-year in 2026 and is “well on our way to a billion-dollar revenue target.”
- He said Zillow’s rental application is purchased once by the consumer and is reusable across properties for 30 days, tying monetization more directly to high-intent transaction activity.
- He said Zillow has processed more than $10 billion of rent payments on its platform since launching payments, with February year-over-year payment processing up about 20%.
- He highlighted rent reporting as a newer feature that reports on-time rent payments to the three credit bureaus to help renters build credit.
On the supply side, Sherman walked through Zillow Rental Manager’s tools across tenant screening, lease building/e-signing and rent collection, along with maintenance and communication features. He positioned Zillow as combining a large audience marketplace with “best-in-class AI-powered tools and services,” emphasizing “outcomes” rather than lead generation.
New consumer experience: “AI Mode” and richer media capture
Nicholas Stephens presented what he called a newly debuted experience, “AI Mode,” integrated into Zillow. He said the goal is to move beyond surface-level Q&A to guidance that can help consumers take concrete steps, such as seeing affordability context, checking current mortgage rates and scheduling tours. Stephens demonstrated the experience using real user prompts from early sessions (with anonymized names and changed pictures) to show how AI Mode handled questions about home features, affordability using Zillow’s BuyAbility product, and touring via ShowingTime integration.
Stephens also discussed improvements to Zillow’s rich media and introduced “Instant Floor Plan,” which he said enables floor plan capture using an iPhone in real time, with on-device feedback to ensure corners and room geometry are captured accurately. He said the feature was being publicly debuted at the event and would be available to demo at lunch.
Professional workflow: AI-powered Follow Up Boss and “Zillow Workspace”
Cameron Swiggett focused on the agent experience and argued AI will not replace agents given the emotional and high-stakes nature of real estate transactions. Instead, he described a “leverage” thesis: helping top-performing agents—who he said drive a disproportionate share of transactions—scale their businesses through AI-powered workflows.
Swiggett demonstrated an AI-driven version of Follow Up Boss with an “Action Hub” that stack-ranks opportunities, generates draft messages, and uses consumer activity signals from Zillow. He described a “My Agent” relationship that connects consumer behavior on Zillow to an agent’s CRM view. He also described AI tools that support tour preparation, voice-to-CRM updates after tours, scheduling optimization through ShowingTime integration, and coordination with Zillow Home Loans for rapid loan scenarios.
He further introduced “Zillow Workspace,” described as a platform combining tools such as dotloop, ShowingTime, Aryeo and listing management, with agentic capabilities that can generate collateral like pricing and comparative market analysis materials. Swiggett also detailed document understanding workflows for inspection reports and offers, including classification, extraction and surfacing key terms and insights for agents and consumers.
Financial discipline, targets and debate check-in
CFO Jeremy Hofmann said Zillow’s financial philosophy centers on strong revenue growth from superior products, fixed-cost discipline to drive high incremental margins, a path to GAAP profitability, M&A as an accelerant and opportunistic share repurchases to control dilution.
Hofmann said Zillow has grown revenue in aggregate by 43% since the start of 2023. He said in 2025, Zillow grew revenue 16% year over year versus a housing market that grew roughly 3%, describing “thirteen hundred basis points of outperformance.” He also cited rentals revenue growth of 130% since 2022 and said Zillow nearly tripled the number of multifamily properties advertising with Zillow from 28,000 to more than 72,000 by the end of Q4. On the mortgage side, he said Zillow Home Loans increased purchase originations by more than 6x over the period discussed.
Hofmann said fixed costs as a percentage of revenue declined from 80% at the end of 2023 to 64% at the end of 2025, and he cited a 14% reduction in stock-based compensation over that period. He said Zillow is “shipping 40% more code per engineer” and cited Smart Summaries as an example that went from concept to launch in less than a week.
On capital allocation, he said Zillow repurchased over $625 million of stock in Q1 2026. For 2026, he reiterated targets of mid-teens revenue growth, continued EBITDA margin expansion and stock-based compensation down more than 10% year over year. He said mid-cycle targets of $5 billion in revenue and a 45% EBITDA margin are unchanged, and the company added a 25% net income margin target to its mid-cycle goals.
Hofmann also addressed several “debates” he said had emerged over the past three years, including concerns around buy-side commissions, competitor spending, listings fragmentation and litigation. He noted that Compass abandoned a lawsuit after a judge ruled its arguments had “no merits,” and referenced Zillow Preview, announced “last week,” as an example of Zillow’s flexibility in how it obtains listings.
Rich Barton’s “chasm” framework and founder engagement
Co-founder and Co-Executive Chairman Rich Barton closed the formal remarks by describing a framework for evaluating which companies can cross major technology shifts, citing founder engagement, big and complex transactions, unique content and data, deep industry integration and command of the consumer funnel. He compared the current AI shift to prior chasms such as streaming for Netflix and mobile for Zillow, recalling Zillow’s early “code red” pivot to iPhone development that helped propel it to category leadership.
Barton said Zillow checks his criteria and described AI as an “accelerant,” not a threat. He also said he has been “a pretty serious stock buyer” of Zillow personally in recent weeks.
During Q&A, executives reiterated themes that AI should raise lead quality and conversion for agents, and said Zillow intends to “meet consumers where they are,” including in horizontal AI experiences, while relying on Zillow’s integrated transaction capabilities for deeper actions such as touring, financing and closing workflows.
About Zillow Group (NASDAQ:Z)
Zillow Group, Inc is an online real estate marketplace company that operates a portfolio of consumer-facing websites and mobile apps designed to connect buyers, sellers, renters, homeowners and real estate professionals. The company’s platforms aggregate property listings, rental listings, and related information to help users search for homes, estimate property values and connect with agents and service providers. Zillow generates revenue primarily through advertising and lead-generation services for real estate professionals, property managers and mortgage lenders.
Key products and services include the Zillow and Trulia consumer websites and apps, which provide searchable listings, photos, neighborhood data and the company’s automated home valuation tool known as the “Zestimate.” Zillow also offers a rentals marketplace, a mortgage marketplace and tools for home buying and selling such as Zillow Premier Agent for agent advertising and leads, as well as ancillary services designed to support transactions, including closing and title-related offerings.
