Zillow Offers pauses home buying

[Chris Martin]

Someone has probably posted about it elsewhere, but Zillow filed a Form 8-K that says "...Zillow Offers will pause home buying in all 24 markets where Zillow Offers currently operates." Zillow was in expansion mode, per their latest SEC annual report filing a few weeks ago:

"We are in the midst of a significant, multi-year business model expansion, building on the strong foundation of our established real estate marketplaces and advertising-based revenue model to move into facilitating real estate transactions and offering related adjacent services. Through our mobile applications and websites, we are focused on helping customers transact and move directly through our growing portfolio of Zillow-branded and affiliated transaction-related services and/or through referrals to trusted Zillow Premier Agent or Premier Broker partners.

This strategic expansion has dramatically increased our total addressable market from $19 billion in real-estate related advertising according to a 2019 Borrell Associates report to $1.9 trillion in annual U.S. real estate transactions, which represents the estimated transaction value of existing and new homes sold in 2019, according to the US Census Bureau and National Association of REALTORS®."

Zillow is also giving agents, it looks like, a one-time 50% off deal. It seems to me they are in a good position to ride out the uncertainty in this market. I see the big getting bigger, with Zillow on top. Their stock has performed very well, relatively speaking, throughout the downturn. I'm expecting Zillow will gain market share, after getting through the COVID-19 freeze.