Zillow Has Gone Wild—for AI | WIRED
Summary
Zillow's CEO highlights AI as a transformative tool for the company amid a challenging housing market, integrating it into various aspects of their business to enhance user experience and operational efficiency.
Why It Matters
As the real estate market faces stagnation, Zillow's strategic focus on AI could redefine how homebuyers interact with listings and streamline internal processes. This shift not only impacts Zillow's competitive edge but also sets a precedent for technology adoption in real estate.
Key Takeaways
- Zillow views AI as an opportunity to enhance its services rather than a threat to its business model.
- The integration of AI features like Virtual Staging and SkyTour aims to improve user engagement and property showcasing.
- Zillow's historical reliance on AI for its Zestimate feature demonstrates its long-standing commitment to technology in real estate.
- Despite innovative features, only a small percentage of users currently utilize advanced AI tools, indicating potential for growth.
- The company is focused on evolving industry standards for AI use in real estate to maintain transparency and trust.
Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this storyThis will not be a banner year for the real estate app Zillow. “We describe the home market as bouncing along the bottom,” CEO Jeremy Wacksman said in our conversation this week. Last year was dismal for the real estate market, and he expects things to improve only marginally in 2026. (If January’s historic drop in home sales is indicative, that even is overoptimistic.) “The way to think about it is that there were 4.1 million existing homes sold last year—a normal market is 5.5 to 6 million,” Wacksman says. He hastens to add that Zillow itself is doing better than the real estate industry overall. Still, its valuation is a quarter of its high-water mark in 2021. A few hours after we spoke, Wacksman announced that Zillow’s earnings had increased last quarter. Nonetheless, Zillow’s stock price fell nearly 5 percent the next day.Wacksman does see a bright spot—AI. Like every other company in the world, generative AI presents both an opportunity and a risk to Zillow’s business. Wacksman much prefers to dwell on the upside. “We think AI is actually an ingredient rather than a threat,” he said on the earnings call. “In the last couple years, the LLM revolution has really opened all of our eyes to what's possible,” he tells me. Zillow is integrating AI into every aspect of its business, from the way it showcases houses to having agents automate its workflow. Wacksman marvels that with Gen AI, you can search for “homes near my kid...
