Recently, Zillow Group opened an in-house, full-service brokerage. Dubbed Zillow Homes, the brokerage launched in January 2021 in Atlanta, Phoenix, and Tucson and will later expand to the 22 other markets where the company currently operates Zillow Offers, its direct home-buying platform.
Most notably, Zillow Homes eliminates third-party agents from real estate transactions. Zillow Homes users can choose to sell their property directly to Zillow or work with a licensed Zillow Homes agent to list on the open market. Either way, Zillow keeps everything in-house.
While Zillow claims the opening of Zillow Homes is not anti-competitive, we at Homesnap believe this is the first—but certainly not the last—attempt by the company to corner the real estate market and eliminate the traditional client-agent relationship.
In our latest whitepaper, we examine:
- The motivations behind Zillow’s launch of an in-house brokerage
- How Zillow’s past history points towards its future plans
- How real estate agents are contributing to Zillow’s efforts to eliminate their profession
- Strategies agents can use to fight back
…and more