‘Unfiltered’: Buyers are ‘DIYing themselves down the funnel’ 

On the latest episode of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered, Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman — who moved into the top role in August, but joined the company during its early days in 2009 — really wants the industry to know how much he supports agents. 

Yes, Zillow is focused on consumers "first and foremost," said Wacksman. But: "I think some in the industry say, well, that must mean you're not for the agent or you don't care about agents. And the reality is that couldn't be further from the truth." 

He discussed the company's substantial investments in technology for real estate professionals, which play into its storied "housing super app," and explained why consumers who use sites like Zillow are "higher intent."  

What's so 'super' about the super app? "We use the term super app to mean bringing a lot of disparate services together in one app," said Wacksman, because "what does the buyer want or the seller want? They want a one-stop shop, right? They want to be able to open the app and kind of do everything from start to finish inside that app, have it notify them, have it stay really transparent, be in control, do things digitally. That's the vision."

To that end, the company has "spent probably billions of dollars over the last decade, either building and developing or buying and integrating software for real estate agents and teams. … No matter who they work with."

If buyers can do everything on Zillow, will they still use agents? Absolutely, said Wacksman, who noted that most buyers still rely on agents. But data and technology can prime them to transact sooner: "We find any time you give consumers more tools, they become more empowered and they become more efficient. But that efficiency doesn't mean they spend less time dreaming and shopping. They actually spend more time. They just spend it at a higher fidelity. So when they meet the agent, they're a little more ready to go," Wacksman said, describing the process as "DIYing themselves down the funnel." 

On Clear Cooperation: Zillow leadership has been open about the company's views on the CCP, and Wacksman was there to reinforce the message. 

"Everyone in the industry benefits from transparency. Yeah, that's something that we were founded on. It benefits everyone, consumers and agents, right? And we have a lot of transparency in the U.S. market that we don't have in any other market. And I think it's easy to take that for granted," Wacksman said. 

"Private listing networks and the removal of CCP are bad for buyers, bad for sellers, and bad for agents. And it's kind of one of those things where, like, I don't really see a pro/con here. It's just bad."

"As consumer-empowerment, transparency-focused folks, this seems pretty cut and dry."