Agents are spending big money on Zillow ads. I saw some agents said they spend more than 3k a month on Zillow ads. But when sales slow the first thing agents cut is ads. If we are indeed heading towards a housing slowdown Zillow will be in a world of hurt.
It could be someone’s 20% project in FB to code up a real estate section and completely wipe off Zillow. But FB is too disciplined a company to do that.
Zillow makes a living fleecing realtors. Most realtors are broke. Poor business model. Zillow will be killed in the downturn that you all are predicting.
They always have an in house mortgage lender but it was not successful. I was not aware that they generate income from rental section as listing is free. I doubt they will get 10,000 origination loans a month. That is about 2% of US total mortgages(Revenue in $K)
Six Months Ended 2017 to 2018 % Change
June 30,
2018 2017
Revenue:
IMT segment:
Premier Agent $444,617 $365,026 +22%
Rentals $62,351 $ 45,255 +38%
Mortgages $38,328 $41,206 (-7)%
Misc $79,829 $61,138 +31%
Total IMT segment revenue $ 625,125 $512,625 22%
Homes segment - - N/A
Total revenue $625,125 $512,625 +22%
The key is premiere agent income is already saturated. No growth potential.
Interesting that investors are cheering the results. The new home and mortgage businesses are horrifically unprofitable (18% and 60% loss). They keep expanding home to new markets too. I don’t get how they get that to a profitable business. How on earth does a mortgage business have a 60% loss unless it’s purposely losing money to stimulate home sales? Meanwhile, the home sales are losing money too.
The revenue growth is impressive. It reminds me of an entrepreneur I know bragging about how effective his ad was for generating $2k in sales for a week. The ad was for a free $15 product if you pay shipping and give a 5-star review before you receive the product. It’s meant to use the product rating to stimulate future sales. Bragging about revenue when the revenue is shipping cost and you lose money on every sale is insane.
Funds are rotating China (or any Asian side) investment money (Reduce) to US companies (Increase) until Covad issue resolved. For them, any good company is better. They madly buy any company just meeting or just + ve results.
Have they been beaten up due to Covid? It doesn’t really seem like it. Maybe BIDU and BABA would have run more? It looked like the Asian markets had recovered with the support from the government.
This is not about retail investors like us, but about Billions held Hedge Funds and other big banks from US, Euro and Asia. They rotate the money wherever profits are there and they suddenly change it once COVAD is comes to normal level.