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Rental listings have been a consistent high-growth revenue stream for Zillow since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. And the company has struck a deal that it believes can push that growth even higher.
On its fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call on Tuesday evening, Zillow announced a partnership with fellow Seattle-headquartered firm Redfin that will make Zillow the exclusive provider of multifamily listings on Redfin, Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com.
Zillow said it will make a $100 million upfront payment to Redfin, and the partnership will roll out over the course of 2025. The deal has a five-year term with two options to extend it by two years.
Zillow’s rental listings income has increased every year since 2020. In 2024, rentals earned $453 million, up from $357 million in 2023 and $274 million in 2022.
“This agreement is really a great win-win,” Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman said on the earnings call. “It expands the reach of the network, and we expect the marketplace overall to benefit as those advertisers can now get access to Zillow, to Redfin’s network and, of course, to Realtor.com, our existing partner.“
Despite a stagnant housing market, Zillow reported that its revenue was up by double-digit percentages across the board in both the fourth quarter and the entire 2024 calendar year.
Zillow’s ambition of vertical integration in real estate transactions predates the pandemic. Its mortgage origination business is one of the company’s links in the end-to-end transaction, and its revenue in this category continues to rebound after it peaked during the post-COVID housing boom.
In 2021, Zillow brought in $246 million in mortgage revenue, only to see it plummet to $119 million when the market came back to earth in 2022, and it fell further to $96 million in 2023. In 2024, Zillow earned $145 million in its mortgage origination channel, up 51% year over year.
Origination volume is up even more, as the company’s purchase loan volume doubled in 2024, while refinance originations rose 69%.
“There’s going to be ins and outs and fluctuations [in mortgage] in seasonal quarter to quarter, but it’s really strong growth against a really challenged market, and our enhanced market strategy is really driving the bulk of that as we introduce customers to Zillow Home Loans if they want to start with financing,” Wacksman said. “Or we work with agents and agent teams to introduce loan officers to them to partner with when they want to start by touring first.”
Despite the rapid rise in revenue, Zillow continues to post a net loss, although this gap is shrinking. The loss for 2024 was $112 million, down from $158 million in 2023. The loss was driven by sales and marketing expenses, which rose from $658 million in 2023 to $790 million in 2024.
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