Zillow And Redfin Enter $100 Million Rentals Agreement with 450 Job Losses Announced

Zillow has eyed up a bigger slice of the rental pie with a major partnership that will see Redfin syndicate Zillow’s multifamily rental listings to Redfin and its sites, Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com.

Earmarked as a "billion-dollar-plus revenue opportunity", the partnership comes as Zillow's strategy shifts towards rental properties in the United States.

The partnership will see up to 450 Redfin employees lose their jobs, according to a separate filing submitted by the brokerage and mortgage origination services provider. The roles affected will be contained to Redfin's rentals division, while the restructuring will cost between $18 million to $21 million—due to be completed by the end of Q2 2025. Employees are expected to leave the company between February and July 2025.

Redfin says Zillow has agreed to pay $100 million for the syndication rights of listings in multifamily buildings with more than 25 units on Redfin’s rental sites, while Zillow will also pay to receive leads generated through the syndication for up to nine years (2034).

Zillow previously entered into a similar partnership with portal competitor Realtor.com in March 2024.

In this week's financial filing, Zillow revealed its Rentals segment revenue grew 25% year-on-year to $116 million for the quarter, while full-year Rentals revenues grew 27% to $453 million. Zillow’s rentals segment had 1.9 million active rental listings as of the end of 2024.

Announced as part of this week's quarterly and full financial year results, Zillow's letter to shareholders states:

Today we announced a partnership with Redfin to provide all of the multifamily listings on their sites, further expanding the reach of multifamily properties that advertise with us, and giving renters on Zillow access to more apartment listings over time. Zillow Rentals’ growth has been buoyed this year by our successful partnership to distribute multifamily rental listings on Realtor.com, as well as our multifamily advertising campaign, both exciting developments that we kicked off in 2024. While our marketing spend has been relatively modest, we strengthened our traffic advantage in the rentals category in 2024, according to Comscore data. The growth we saw last year, and expect this year, supports our belief that Zillow Rentals is well on its way toward the billion-dollar-plus revenue opportunity we see in front of us.

Zillow's full-year revenues have recovered steadily since 2021 and the firm's post-iBuying business appears to be delivering solid results, albeit at a net loss—$52 million for 2024.

But if Jeremy Wacksman et al are confident that rentals are a billion-dollar opportunity for the best-known portal in the United States, profitability could be on the horizon.