Zillow Weighs In On AI With Open Letter, Announces AI Summit

Zillow has outlined its 'structural AI advantage' in an open letter to investors. The portal highlighted that AI is already deployed across several segments of its business, and is "producing results."

"We are technologists at heart," said Zillow, before suggesting that its innovations will be focused on helping consumers 'act' rather than ask questions about homes.

Core pillars include: inventory; real-time tour scheduling for home in-person visits; integration across multiple systems and parties; compliance; and trust.

"We are still in the very early innings of how AI will transform consumer experiences, but we strongly believe the critical differentiators between those who succeed and those who get left behind in our category will be user experience, quality of audience, proprietary real-world data and context that enables unique insights and personalization capabilities, and providing integrated transaction services across the mover journey instead of just top-of-funnel lead generation.

We are technologists at heart, and just as Zillow has in previous technology changes, we feel incredibly well-positioned to lead in this AI transformation as we deliver vertically-integrated AI in residential real estate.

Other Horizontal LLMs, real estate brokers, MLSs, and other ILSs lack our proprietary collection of assets that are integrated to provide unique consumer search and engagement experiences, personalization with our broad consumer context, and integrated end-to-end transactional capabilities in For Sale and Rentals. Each consumer interaction generates proprietary context that improves personalization, which earns deeper engagement, which generates richer data — a compounding flywheel that strengthens Zillow's benefit from AI over time.

Zillow is providing AI-integrated workflow tools to further empower productive agents to keep winning more business, keep growing, and keep differentiating themselves. The top 20% of agents or teams handle 80% of U.S. residential real estate transactions, and nearly four in five Zillow Premier Agent partners fall into that top tier."

Zillow's letter, its first significant comment about how artificial intelligence will shape its business and the industry as a whole, reasserts that it remains a clear market leader for real estate search in the United States. Figures shared by Zillow include deep access to the marketplace ("70% of all U.S. buyers and sellers are on our apps and sites, while circa 80% of visitors come directly to Zillow to engage in a home search"), and minimal reliance on paid-for traffic (less than 5%). "Our consumer relationship is earned, not rented," commented Zillow.

The portal highlighted its natural language search, launched in 2023, while it was the first real estate marketplace to launch a ChatGPT plugin in October 2025.

The Seattle-based market leader added that access to proprietary rich media means that 3D floor plans and 'Showcase' are on nearly 10% of new for-sale listings coming to its portal, "the largest immersive-media coverage in the industry."

The letter comes a week after Zillow's rival, CoStar Group, launched its industry-leading search tool, Homes AI, on its flagship residential portal. Unlike its rival, Zillow has not put its AI-powered tool on its website, preferring to keep it app-based for now.

As with several real estate portal operators worldwide, Zillow's share price has taken a beating since the turn of the year, exacerbated by cautious guidelines in its latest financial results and investor fears about AI.

Zillow's AI Summit for investors scheduled for March

Zillow has also announced an AI summit for investors next month, focusing on how the company "continues to deliver and lead on AI innovation in real estate."

According to a press release, Zillow's AI summit will be a half-day event showcasing Zillow's integrated transaction platform, which enables AI to operate across the full residential journey.

In an AI-driven environment, advantage accrues to platforms with closed-loop transaction data and embedded workflows at scale. Zillow operates across discovery, pricing signals, touring activity, agent connections, financing exploration and closing — creating a comprehensive view of the residential transaction that is not available through standalone tools or general-purpose AI systems. This integration enables Zillow to train and deploy AI purpose-built for housing, delivering more precise matches, smarter guidance and helping more consumers and professionals transact.

Zillow highlighted that ongoing consumer relationships at scale, embedded professional workflows, and structures, category-specific data, are core to the company's competitive advantage.

Senior leaders and speakers, including co-founders and co-executive chairmen Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, incumbent CEO Jeremy Wacksman, and CFO Jeremy Hofmann, will also participate in the event. In-person attendance will be by invitation only.

Wacksman commented:

"AI creates a durable advantage in real estate when it is integrated across the entire transaction. Over more than two decades, Zillow has built the infrastructure, proprietary data and professional relationships that allow intelligence to be embedded at every step for the consumer — from search and touring to financing and closing. Because our platform connects these stages in a single system, every interaction strengthens the next, continuously improving outcomes for consumers and partners."