Zillow bets on pre-marketing to unlock new growth

Zillow Group started off 2026 with a strong financial performance in the first quarter of the year, recording an 18% annual increase in revenue to $708 million and a net income of $46 million, up from $8 million in Q1 2025. 

Chief financial officer Jeremy Hofmann attributes this strong performance to Zillow’s consistent execution of its strategy. 

“We’re helping people go beyond searching and finding and really starting to buy, sell, rent and close,” Hofmann told HousingWire. “So, we’re quite pleased with that and it shows up in the numbers.”

Despite a continued slow housing market and rising mortgage rates, Zillow’s residential revenue grew 8% annually to $450 million, while rental revenue grew 42% year-over-year to $183 million and mortgage revenue rose 56% from a year prior to $64 million.

Zillow attributed the annual boost in residential revenue to growth across Preferred, “So many brokerages see value in public pre-marketing, and coming to Zillow is an opportunity to give value to everyone versus some others in the market that are gating inventory, putting inventory behind a registration wall, saying you have to sign up with a brokerage to see this inventory and Preview is the antidote to that. It is public exposure, and that is what people want,” Hofmann said.

Hofmann cited a recent Harris Poll survey that found that nearly 9 in 10 Americans would be interested in viewing pre-listed homes online if they were buying a home, and 85% of soon-to-be sellers said they’d be more likely to hire an agent who can pre-market their home to the broadest online audience.

Although the product is still in its early days, Hofmann said Zillow expects the product will be “incremental to the business” moving forward. 

As Zillow looks to the future, given today’s technology environment,