Zillow CEO: “It’s Time to Accelerate Past 'Portal 1.0'”

Zillow CEO Rich Barton says the real estate industry needs to move away from the "portal 1.0 experience" and accelerate towards a coordinated, integrated, and digitized experience.

Barton took the stage at the Inman Connect conference in Las Vegas, likening the industry's experience to that of an ever-accelerating car on a race track—unable to catch its breath between one lap and the next:

"As a species, we haven’t really had time to catch our breath and process the last lap around the track, which was the smartphone lap. And now we’re being told to accelerate on the next lap. Here comes AI, [and] around we go again.

"We are accelerating, and that queasiness we’re all feeling is natural."

Barton pointed to Zillow's own revenue distribution as emblematic of change over time.

"You all may not know this, but less than half of our company’s revenue now comes from buyers agents, lead generation or original business model.

"Our growth and opportunity as a company now comes from investing in this array of digital workflow, tools and technologies for the industry as a whole.

"Showingtime has been a big success for us. Follow-up Boss, Listing Showcase dotloop, Aryeo...We did not build, invest in and integrate these products to keep them inside the walled garden. We did it to make them broadly available and to power your businesses."

Referencing Brad Inman's own comments in 2013 - the analogy that buying a house should be as easy as buying a latte - Barton commented that the industry is inevitably moving in that direction, and that portals must forge closer relationships with their agent customers:

"[Inman's] vision was organizing this mess and saying moving should be as easy as buying a latte. Well, we’re getting there. It’s taking a while, but we’re getting there.

"This would not be possible if we didn’t have great agent partners. It would not be possible if we didn’t prioritize them, and it would not be possible if we weren’t helping drive real business for them.

"As we accelerate faster to the future, I am really pleased that we are pitching a really big tent and inviting everyone underneath.

"We do not believe this is a zero-sum game. We digitize the industry, and we all win. You grow, we grow, and our customers get what they want."