This app is available only on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.
Description
We’re reimagining how you buy, sell, and rent. It’s now easier to get into a place you love. So let’s do this, together.
BUY A HOME – Find your place with an immersive photo experience and the most listings, including things you won’t find anywhere else.
SELL A HOME – Whether you sell with new Zillow Offers™ or take another approach, we’ll help you navigate the path to a successful sale.
RENT A HOME – We’re creating a seamless online experience – from shopping on the largest rental network to applying to paying rent.
Empower your home search. With access to millions of listings of every kind across the U.S. and resources you won't find elsewhere, Zillow provides guidance every step of the way so you can find – and get into – a home you love. The Zillow App brings our best-in-class features together in one place including:
• Zillow has the most listings and constant updates so you never miss out¹
• Zillow Premier Agents meet Zillow’s bar for quality customer service, so you have a great home buying experience, with personal support
• Zillow Offers™ is a new way to sell your home - without the prep work or showings - directly to Zillow²
• Zestimate®, the industry-leading independent home valuation tool, calculated daily
• Robust filters for school districts, views, pricing, and more
• Push notifications when listings come to market, go pending, or drop in price
• Neighborhood information including restaurants, grocery stores, parks, and coffee shops
• Favoriting, personalized recommendations, home tagging and quick sharing with family & friends
Disclaimers:
1. Most listing based on direct site comparisons.
2. Not all homes are eligible. Zillow, Inc. has a real estate brokerage license in select states. See Zillow.com/Offers for details.
BUY A HOME – Find your place with an immersive photo experience and the most listings, including things you won’t find anywhere else.
SELL A HOME – Whether you sell with new Zillow Offers™ or take another approach, we’ll help you navigate the path to a successful sale.
RENT A HOME – We’re creating a seamless online experience – from shopping on the largest rental network to applying to paying rent.
Empower your home search. With access to millions of listings of every kind across the U.S. and resources you won't find elsewhere, Zillow provides guidance every step of the way so you can find – and get into – a home you love. The Zillow App brings our best-in-class features together in one place including:
• Zillow has the most listings and constant updates so you never miss out¹
• Zillow Premier Agents meet Zillow’s bar for quality customer service, so you have a great home buying experience, with personal support
• Zillow Offers™ is a new way to sell your home - without the prep work or showings - directly to Zillow²
• Zestimate®, the industry-leading independent home valuation tool, calculated daily
• Robust filters for school districts, views, pricing, and more
• Push notifications when listings come to market, go pending, or drop in price
• Neighborhood information including restaurants, grocery stores, parks, and coffee shops
• Favoriting, personalized recommendations, home tagging and quick sharing with family & friends
Disclaimers:
1. Most listing based on direct site comparisons.
2. Not all homes are eligible. Zillow, Inc. has a real estate brokerage license in select states. See Zillow.com/Offers for details.
Find real estate and homes for sale today. Use the most comprehensive source of MLS property listings on the Internet with realtor.com®. Thanks for the A2A Nathan. Your question reminded me of something a successful business person said to me decades ago. The best commercial property to buy is the one that isn’t for sale. Commercial Real Estate is a different animal and most people.
What’s New
This week, we’ve made some performance improvements and minor bug fixes. We are always working hard to make finding your next home even easier. Please continue to send your feedback to [email protected]. We appreciate it!
3.3M Ratings
Horrible now with street view replacement
I previously liked this app but when I can no longer use the area view from above to see all sides of the house and the back yard, you made my job harder to find properties in another state. The street view is horrible, slow, and if the house property has an alley, you might see a little of the back, and sometimes you can't. What once took 20 secs now takes minutes to slowly navigate and many times I can't even see the side and back of a house. Please bring back the mapping view where I can use my iPhone to drill in, out and flip to the side views and back yard. This is how I narrowed down options plus it helped to zoom out to evaluate the neighborhood. The upgrade also lost some property lines on that view (iOS 10.3.3). This is also important to me. I want a list of 5 homes to look when I go to my hometown and you made that impossible. I will need to drive to them. People are losing opportunities and your value decrease A GREAT DEAL because of these changes. Please bring the satellite area view back rather than the clunky slow street one. Thank you.
Not a fan of the latest update; Zestimate algorithm feels Orwellian.
1. I feel like it’s now harder to see the HOA fees when you’re browsing, and those can make a huge difference in the affordability of the listing. Also, I feel like it’s harder to change the mortgage estimate (it used to be easy to zero out the insurance payment if you could see that was covered by HOA — it’s still easy to zero that out, but now I can’t figure out how to make it recalculate the monthly mortgage once I make changes). Also, the new app icon kind of looks like someone sat on the old logo/icon? Not sure if that’s what the effect they were going for...
2. Since Zillow relies on an algorithm to harvest listings from MLS sites, it’s not always as accurate as an actual MLS site (it often misses when properties are sold, for instance).
3. The Zestimate algorithm continues to puzzle me... it doesn’t seem to have much basis in reality, and when my house was on the market the Zestimate would fluctuate wildly, yet the sudden $30,000 drop in the Zestimate wouldn’t be reflected in graph of the recent Zestimates. It was like the 1984 version of the real estate appraisal...
4. BUT, I use Zillow to browse anyway because it’s free and it’s a relatively intuitive app — if I see something I like, I ask my real estate agent about it, and they send me the official MLS listing with the more accurate details.
2. Since Zillow relies on an algorithm to harvest listings from MLS sites, it’s not always as accurate as an actual MLS site (it often misses when properties are sold, for instance).
3. The Zestimate algorithm continues to puzzle me... it doesn’t seem to have much basis in reality, and when my house was on the market the Zestimate would fluctuate wildly, yet the sudden $30,000 drop in the Zestimate wouldn’t be reflected in graph of the recent Zestimates. It was like the 1984 version of the real estate appraisal...
4. BUT, I use Zillow to browse anyway because it’s free and it’s a relatively intuitive app — if I see something I like, I ask my real estate agent about it, and they send me the official MLS listing with the more accurate details.
Still Needs Improvement
Zillow does not worry about facts and their information can be very inaccurate. I was advised by my realtor to avoid using Zillow because of inaccurate information. The Zillow website is very user friendly, but just beware it can be misleading. After I bought my new home I “claimed it” on the Zillow website. They are showing I purchased the home for much less than I did, but they will not correct this information. I called the tax office just to be sure nothing bogus was going on. It turns out my info and the tax office is the same. So long story short, Zillow is not concerned with showing us inaccurate information.
Update: After several email exchanges, scanning and submitting documents proving I was providing factual information, Zillow corrected the information I was disputing. The person who helped me seemed polite and helpful. So I changed my review from a 1 star to 3 stars. The reason for 3 stars is I still have several problems with what happened. First off, I still do not know why false information was provided. Second, I do not know why it was so hard to have the information corrected. Third, and this is my biggest problem...I have asked Zillow repeatedly where did they get their incorrect information, and Zillow has never responded to my question.
Update: After several email exchanges, scanning and submitting documents proving I was providing factual information, Zillow corrected the information I was disputing. The person who helped me seemed polite and helpful. So I changed my review from a 1 star to 3 stars. The reason for 3 stars is I still have several problems with what happened. First off, I still do not know why false information was provided. Second, I do not know why it was so hard to have the information corrected. Third, and this is my biggest problem...I have asked Zillow repeatedly where did they get their incorrect information, and Zillow has never responded to my question.
Developer Response,
Our team would like to investigate right away. If you email [email protected] we’ll reach out directly.
Information
Requires iOS 11.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Apple TV.
Supports
Family Sharing
With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.
In today’s on-demand digital world, buying and selling a home remains stubbornly, painfully analog. Most sales still begin with a real estate agent (and a 6 percent commission). Most still end in an office, with the two sides signing page after page of legalese.
Silicon Valley wants to change that. Tech companies have begun to nibble away at the edges of the residential real estate industry, offering virtual open houses, digital closings and other services. Now they are coming straight for the real estate transaction itself through “instant buying,” in which companies buy homes, perform some light maintenance and put them back on the market.
Established companies like Zillow and venture-backed upstarts like Opendoor and Offerpad have raised billions of dollars on the promise that they can use sophisticated algorithms to predict the value of individual homes. They contend that those predictions, combined with old-fashioned economies of scale, will allow them to be far more efficient than traditional home flippers.
The companies and their backers say they are doing what tech is best at: bringing efficiency and convenience to a process not known for either. Silicon Valley has already upended the way we hail a cab and order takeout, they argue. Why not improve a transaction that even well-educated professionals find intimidating?
“You should be able to sell a home within a handful of clicks,” said Eric Wu, Opendoor’s chief executive.
But houses are not taxicabs. A bad Uber ride might set a user back $20 and make her late for a meeting. A house is the largest asset for most Americans and the most expensive purchase they will ever make.
At best, skeptics see instant buying, also known as “iBuying,” as an overhyped, capital-intensive business whose explosive growth will fizzle once investors tire of profit margins that Zillow itself calls “razor thin.” At worst, they worry that it could bring volatility and risk to an industry that has already brought down the American economy once this century.
[Read more: Fueled by venture capital investments, technology advances are transforming the commercial real estate industry as well, with New York as a center of innovation.]
Glenn Kelman, the chief executive of Redfin, the online brokerage firm, said there was a danger in pouring huge sums into buying up homes “without having a clear idea of how you’re going to make money on almost every single home.” If that happens, he said, “you’re just putting the housing markets, the capital markets, at some degree of risk.”
Instant buying is a small part of the market, but it is growing at breakneck speed. Zillow bought fewer than 700 homes in 2018; it expects to be buying 5,000 homes per month in three to five years. Opendoor, the first big iBuyer, bought more than 11,000 homes last year and in the past year has raised more than $1 billion to step up its pace.
The companies typically aim to hold homes for 90 days or less before selling them, typically to an individual buyer. For the eventual owner, little changes about the process.
In Phoenix, instant buying accounts for 6 percent of all real estate transactions, according to Mike DelPrete, an industry analyst. And in a sign of how iBuying is reshaping the housing market, Mr. Kelman’s own company is getting into the game, buying homes in California, Colorado and Texas through a program it calls RedfinNow.
Even traditional brokerage firms like Keller Williams and Realogy, which owns Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and other brands, have announced plans for instant-buying programs. The trend is a threat to the brokers’ business model — but if it is going to happen regardless, they would rather get a piece of the action.
There have always been people who need to sell their homes quickly because of a lost job or a sudden move. But selling fast has come at a price, usually a steep discount. Instant buyers promise a much smaller discount, perhaps shaving only 1 or 2 percent off what a homeowner might get in a conventional sale.
For the right seller, that trade-off might be worth it.
When Dora Cagnetto decided to sell her townhouse in Phoenix this year, a real estate agent told her that she could get around $375,000 for it. Maybe $390,000. But she would have to replace the carpet and paint the walls. At 68 years old and recently retired, she thought it sounded like a lot of work.
One evening, after the carpet had been ripped up, Ms. Cagnetto saw an online ad for Zillow Offers. Zillow, better known for telling people what their homes are worth, would buy her home itself. She uploaded some photos and got back an offer: $382,000, minus a fee for Zillow. No repair work or open houses necessary. And Zillow paid cash.
Ms. Cagnetto estimated she effectively paid $10,000 to $15,000 for the privilege of turning over to Zillow the job of replacing the carpet and the bathroom countertops and doing other light repair work.
“My son, he’s like, ‘Well, oh, I could have done that,’ and maybe he would have saved a little money,” Ms. Cagnetto said. “But to me it was like, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to hire somebody to do that, I don’t want to put carpeting in, I don’t want to paint these walls.”
The Phoenix area has become a hub of the iBuying phenomenon. With its relatively new housing stock and miles of buff-colored subdivisions, the market is affordable, uniform in look and steadily growing.
Whether iBuying works outside markets like Phoenix and Las Vegas is an open question. The model has yet to break into the Northeast, where the housing stock is older, the weather drives up maintenance costs and there are fewer of the kind of cookie-cutter subdivisions that the industry’s algorithms assess best. Prices are higher, too, making mistakes costlier for the companies.
Companies say they will be able to wring more efficiency out of the system as they gain scale and experience. But experts are doubtful. Chris Mayer, a real estate economist at Columbia University, said the things that made housing transactions expensive wouldn’t change.
“This isn’t like selling a mortgage, where everyone is selling the same mortgage, or seats on a flight,” Mr. Mayer said.
Indeed, Mr. Wu’s vision of selling a house with a few taps on a smartphone remains far off. For now, algorithms help determine iBuyers’ preliminary bids, but those offers don’t become final until an inspector has had a look around. It still mostly falls on humans to determine whether a foundation is cracked or a kitchen needs remodeling.
Even the back-office functions remain labor intensive. Zillow Offers has close to 200 employees in Phoenix working in rows of cubicles to scale and streamline the decades-old process of working with a real estate agent to price, stage and show a home in hopes of getting the best price in the market. One row of cubicles has analysts working to create indexes of comparable prices. Another row has people taking calls from potential sellers and helping them close the deal. Others are working to get crews to paint, carpet and landscape recently purchased homes so Zillow can quickly get them back on the market.
Zillow essentially acknowledges that it doesn’t expect to make much money per home on its instant-offers program. Instead, it sees selling homes as a way to generate business for its mortgage-lending arm, which it developed after acquiring Mortgage Lenders of America last year, and for other services. It is the rough equivalent of the car dealership that sells cars at a loss but makes money by offering financing.
“Where you are able to make money is through mortgage origination,” said Svenja Gudell, Zillow’s chief economist. “That’s why we own a mortgage company.”
The question no one can yet answer is what will happen to iBuyers — and iBuying — when the housing market inevitably cools, leaving companies holding thousands of homes that are worth less than they thought.
Mr. Kelman said a micro version of that situation played out late last year when rising interest rates led to a slowdown that iBuyers’ algorithms didn’t anticipate. Redfin sold homes at a loss; others held on, hoping for a rebound. The optimists proved right, and the market quickly rebounded. But Mr. Kelman said the experience was a warning sign.
“If rates had continued going up and the housing market had continued going down, it would have been a squeeze,” he said.
Zillow and Opendoor say their products could be even more valuable when the real estate market slows. The housing market often seizes up during periods of rapid change, as buyers and sellers struggle to agree on prices. Instant buyers, with their emotionless algorithms, could get the market moving again by accepting lower prices for houses held in inventory and thus setting benchmarks for other sellers.
That disagreement highlights a tension at the center of the iBuying model. It aims to eliminate the frictions that slow down the real estate market: protracted negotiations, contingent offers, financing that falls apart before closing. But that very slowness contributes to real estate’s stability — it is hard to have a “flash crash” when it takes 90 days for a sale to clear escrow. And a large part of the United States economy, from the 30-year mortgage to the home-equity loan to the property taxes that fund school districts, is built on that stability.
“From a net-worth perspective, real estate is by far the biggest asset for most Americans, and historically that value has been very stable,” said Sam Khater, chief economist for the government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac.
That could be iBuying’s biggest challenge, Mr. DelPrete said. The process is unfamiliar, and sellers are reluctant to gamble with the biggest transaction of their lives.
“The biggest headwind to this getting mass traction is human psychology,” he said. “The bigger the potential downside, the more risk averse they are.”