Zillow's house flipping business spells nothing but success for the company

Zillow Offers has created a new path towards revenue growth in just a little over a year.

If you’ve ever looked online for a place to live, you’re undoubtedly familiar with Zillow. For most of its existence, the publicly traded company has earned the vast majority of its revenue through ad sales from brokers hoping to get the attention of renters and buyers. But based on some new revenue data, it sounds like Zillow has made very serious progress toward cutting out those real-estate players entirely.

According to earnings data cited by Geekwire, Zillow just made a majority of its quarterly revenue—$384.6 million out of $745 million—from selling homes directly to users through its Zillow Offers platform. That $348.6 million was generated from 1,211 home sales in the quarter against 2,291 home buys, resulting in a net operating loss of $87.9 million for the vertical. Despite that net loss, news of its 55% quarterly growth in home sales revenue caused Zillow stock to shoot up by 12% in the wake of the announcement.

This development comes just 19 months after the direct-sales option launched in April 2018 for Phoenix-area homeowners. Currently, Zillow has real-estate brokerage licenses in 11 states, allowing homeowners in 21 major markets to request an offer on their property directly through the company’s offers portal. 

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