Zillow Group has spent years cementing its position as a cornerstone of the real estate technology ecosystem, building scale, brand recognition, and a broad suite of consumer-facing services.
Yet as the company demonstrates renewed financial strength and operational discipline, it is simultaneously confronting one of the most significant strategic challenges in its history: Google’s growing involvement in real estate search. While Zillow’s recent results highlight strong short-term momentum, Google’s vast reach and platform power introduce long-term risks that could reshape competitive dynamics across the sector.
Zillow’s performance in the third quarter of 2025 reflects a company that has largely stabilized after years of strategic recalibration. Revenue rose 16% year over year to $676 million, driven primarily by steady growth in its core For Sale segment and a sharp acceleration in Rentals. For Sale revenue increased to $488 million, while Rentals climbed 41% to $174 million, underscoring the success of Zillow’s efforts to diversify beyond traditional home listings.
The Mortgages segment also delivered strong results, with revenue rising to $53 million as purchase loan origination volumes jumped sharply. These gains translated into improved profitability, with adjusted EBITDA reaching $165 million and margins expanding to 24%, signaling better cost control and operating leverage.
Beyond the financials, Zillow has continued to grow its audience and deepen engagement. Average monthly unique users reached 250 million, up 7% from a year earlier, reinforcing its role as a primary destination for housing-related decisions.
The company’s long-term vision of becoming a “housing super app” is beginning to take shape, bringing rentals, mortgages, and home services into a more integrated consumer experience. Partnerships such as the collaboration with AppFolio have helped accelerate rental growth, while rising rentals revenue earlier in 2025 illustrated the potential of this multi-vertical strategy to reduce reliance on any single line of business.
However, Zillow’s improving fundamentals are increasingly overshadowed by structural threats posed by Google’s entry into real estate discovery. Google’s move to surface home listings directly within search results has already unsettled investors, triggering a notable drop in Zillow’s share price. Although the near-term impact may be muted—given that much of Zillow’s traffic comes directly rather than through search—the longer-term implications are harder to ignore.
At its core, Zillow’s business depends on consumer attention and trust at the earliest stages of the home search process. Google’s dominance in search gives it unparalleled control over how and where users encounter property information.
If Google continues to expand its real estate features across markets, it could gradually intercept user intent before consumers ever reach Zillow’s platform. This would weaken Zillow’s visibility and reduce its leverage with agents and advertisers, two critical pillars of its revenue model.
There is also a financial dimension to the risk. As Google embeds real estate more deeply into its ecosystem, Zillow could face higher customer acquisition costs if it needs to compete for prominence through paid placements. Unlike Zillow, which operates as a focused real estate platform, Google can bundle listings with maps, reviews, and local discovery tools, creating a frictionless experience that is difficult for standalone portals to match.
In this context, Zillow’s challenge is not one of immediate survival but of long-term strategic defense. Its recent performance shows resilience and adaptability, yet Google’s scale and ecosystem advantages represent a fundamentally different kind of competition—one that could reshape how consumers discover homes and where value ultimately accrues in digital real estate.
