How serious are Zillow and Redfin about iBuying?

In the past year, two of the U.S.'s leading portals, Zillow and Redfin, have launched iBuyer businesses. Zillow's entry was, in part, a response to an existential threat to its business model, and much of the value it may derive is not from buying and selling houses at all, but by generating valuable seller leads (watch my video presentation). Which begs the question: How serious is Zillow about being an iBuyer?

Opendoor's 3x advantage

The best way to compare seriousness is actual market traction and purchase volumes -- putting your money where your mouth is.

In the first seven months of 2019, Opendoor continues to be the clear leader in the iBuyer space as measured by home purchase volume. Opendoor has purchased nearly 10,000 homes, around three times the volume of Zillow.

On average, Opendoor is purchasing around 1,400 homes per month (as an aside, a recent Opendoor commercial stated the company buys a home every 34 minutes -- or around 1,300 per month). Again, this number is about three times the volume of Zillow for the first seven months of 2019.

However, Opendoor's volume advantage is eroding over time as Zillow's activity accelerates. In January, Opendoor purchased 4.7x the volume of Zillow, but that is down to 2.4x in July. Zillow is closing the gap (especially in the last three months).

The magic number in all of this appears to be 3x: year-to-date in 2019, Opendoor is about 3x ahead of Zillow in terms of home purchases. But Zillow is catching up.

Available firepower to purchase homes

Another way to judge a company's level of seriousness about iBuying is how much debt it has available to purchase homes. Each of the major iBuyers has secured massive amounts of debt, but some have secured more than others.

Once again, the magic 3x number appears: Opendoor has three times the debt available to purchase homes compared to Zillow. So it is no surprise that it is purchasing three times the volume of homes.

What about Redfin?

Readers may notice Redfin in distant fourth place in many of the charts, which, again, is an indicator of seriousness about iBuying.

Opendoor has 30x the debt available and has purchased nearly 40x the homes compared to Redfin in 2019. On average, Opendoor is purchasing around 1,400 homes per month, compared to Redfin's 36 homes per month. Redfin is an iBuyer in the same way I'm a basketball player. Both statements are technically true, but neither of us are anywhere close to the big leagues.

Differing strategies and motivations

Opendoor's entire business model revolves around buying and selling as many homes as possible. At scale, it becomes a powerful business. Zillow, on the other hand, may want to moderate its home purchases to achieve a scale where it maximizes seller leads. As I've said before, Zillow has the potential to make more money with less risk by monetizing seller leads.

Zillow's purchase rate (the amount of homes it buys compared to the total number of offer requests it receives) has consistently hovered around 2 percent.

Zillow is expanding fast to catch up to Opendoor, but it may have different motivations in doing so. Zillow's buying activity in Phoenix, for example, has plateaued since January of 2019. Is it taking a well-earned breather, or is 100 homes a month all it wants (or needs) to buy?

The evidence suggests that Zillow is serious about being an iBuyer and a major player in the space. But its motivations, and the question of why it wants to be an iBuyer, may differ significantly from other iBuyers.

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Check out the part of my Inman Connect presentation where I talk about Zillow's pivot to iBuying, and the value of seller leads.

Realtor.com’s slow descent to irrelevancy

With the rise of iBuyers as a powerful new starting point in the consumer journey, realtor.com is yielding the strategic advantage to arch-rival Zillow. Lacking an iBuyer strategy for the past year, realtor.com has fallen further behind in terms of delivering value to consumers and agents. Multiple options to enter the space are available, but the clock is ticking for realtor.com to execute strongly and maintain relevance in a rapidly evolving industry.

Power at the top of the funnel

One of the topics I discussed in my recent Inman Connect presentation was the power companies have at the start of the consumer journey. Real estate portals around the world derive and maintain their dominant positions because they are a consumer's first stop in the home buying and selling process.

In the days before the internet, real estate agents were the starting point. With the launch of Zillow and its Zestimate, portals became the popular starting point for consumers. Opendoor and iBuyers shifted the dynamic by offering instant offers on homes, attracting consumers. Today, a number of iBuyer aggregators and real estate agents are fighting to attract consumers by incorporating instant offer services. I explain further in the quick video clip below.

In some markets, up to 40 percent of serious home sellers are requesting an instant offer before listing their home! Instant offers are becoming the new Zestimate -- the new, natural starting point for determining a home’s value. And because of this, they are also an existential threat to portals.

The value of seller leads

The iBuyer business model generates a ton of high-intent seller leads: consumers who are interested in moving and request an offer, but don’t sell their home to an iBuyer. In the last three months alone, Zillow generated 69,000 offer requests but only bought 1,500 homes. The remaining leads can be distributed to real estate agents -- a valuable source of new business.

Today, Zillow Offers is active in 11 markets. Once it expands to 20 markets, Zillow could generate close to 500,000 seller leads annually -- a number that will increase as its national roll-out continues.

Zillow and realtor.com’s traditional lead generation businesses are built around buyer leads. iBuying has become the holy grail of seller leads: popular with consumers, valuable to agents, and of generally high quality. Over time, these leads will become a valuable source of new business for real estate agents, and an additional revenue driver for Zillow.

Using rough estimates, it's clear that the profit potential of seller leads far outweighs that of buying and selling actual homes, with considerably less risk for Zillow.

Real estate agents partnering with Zillow receive valuable buyer and seller leads. The same partnership with realtor.com yields only buyer leads.

Strategic advantage: Zillow

Each day, Zillow continues building its sustainable competitive advantage by strengthening its leadership position in consumer’s minds as the place to go for an instant offer. Simultaneously, Zillow generates tens-of-thousands of valuable seller leads for its agent customers each month -- a service which realtor.com does not provide.

For a real estate portal’s two most important audiences -- consumers and agents -- Zillow is highly differentiated while realtor.com lags behind.

Realtor.com needs to provide an iBuyer service -- but does not need to buy and sell houses directly -- to compete with Zillow. The logical entry point is a partnership with a national iBuyer (and that iBuyer, by the way, needs an inexpensive source of leads just as much as realtor.com needs an iBuyer service).

Until realtor.com unveils a coherent iBuyer strategy, it will remain at a growing disadvantage to Zillow, and risks further irrelevancy in the evolving battle for consumer eyeballs.

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Check out my entire Inman Connect presentation, "iBuying Disrupted: Battle of the Behemoths."

iBuying is Zestimate 2.0

When Zillow launched in 2006, its Zestimate was its claim to fame.

The Zestimate was a lead generation tool that attracted consumers by giving them a starting point for determining what their home -- or any home -- is worth. It was online, it was fast, and it was easy.

Flash forward more than a decade later, and online valuation tools are a commodity. There are dozens of web sites that will determine a home's estimated value. Zillow’s unique advantage has diminished.

Zillow's strategic necessity

I believe Zillow's guiding strategic principle is that it must be consumers' first destination in the home buying and selling process. Zillow's sustainable competitive advantage lies in its massive audience and strong position at the start of the consumer journey.

In the past, other listing portal competitors were relatively undifferentiated. Zillow has been the clear market leader, and there was no credible threat that could unseat it from its powerful position.

However, the entry of iBuyers with a service that made instant offers on a home – online – was novel and compelling, just like the Zestimate in 2006. Suddenly, more and more consumers were beginning their home selling process not on Zillow, but on other web sites like Opendoor and Offerpad. This was a key existential threat for Zillow.

The iBuyer business model is Zestimate 2.0 – the natural starting point for determining your home’s value. What’s more accurate than an actual offer on your home?

Mass-market appeal

Opendoor's long-term vision is that every home owner will request an instant offer before selling their home. It's a natural starting point: It's easy, it provides value, and there's no commitment. What better way to value your home than an actual offer?

While Zillow only purchases around three percent of the offer requests it receives (that number is higher for the other iBuyers), a very large number of consumers are requesting offers each month. In established markets like Phoenix, anywhere from 25–35 percent of active home sellers request an instant offer before selling their home. The numbers are BIG.

Given the growing mass market appeal of an instant offer (tens of thousands of requests each month) and the simplicity of the process, it's no surprise that Zillow launched its own iBuyer service.

Strategic implications

If you're in the business of providing consumers an estimate of the value of their home, the bar has just been set higher. The inherit power and appeal of the iBuyer model is quite clear:

• Instant offers are simple, easy, and quick. All online.

• Instant offers are at the start of the funnel -- they attract consumers at the start of the home buying or selling journey.

• It's a novel concept that satisfies a consumer need, hence the high proportion of consumers requesting offers.

In other words, iBuying is the new Zestimate.

Rightmove's slowing growth: same problem as Zillow, different strategy

Rightmove, the U.K.'s top portal, announced its full-year 2018 results last week.

Why it matters: Not unlike Zillow, the growth in Rightmove's core advertising business continues to slow. The slowdown in velocity reveals the limits and highlights the challenges the business will need to overcome as it looks for new growth opportunities.

Overall revenue grows and slows

Overall revenue at Rightmove grew 10 percent last year -- respectable, double-digit growth, but also the lowest number recorded in its history.

Rightmove's core revenue driver is its Agency business, which accounts for over 75 percent of total revenue (concentration risk!). Annual growth continues to slide over time. The 8.7 percent growth is the lowest number recorded, and reflects the growing difficulty the business has in charging its customers more money for the same service.

Nearly all of Rightmove's growth is coming from price increases (average revenue per advertiser, or ARPA), as opposed to new customers. The amount that Rightmove is able to squeeze out of its existing customers is slowing over time.

Controlling expenses

Historically, Rightmove has demonstrated incredibly disciplined cost control. By managing its expenses, Rightmove is able to maintain its phenomenal 76 percent profit margins.

But while good for the bottom line, controlling expenses too much can limit the ability of a business to invest in future revenue streams.

One way Rightmove maintains its margins is limited headcount growth. In 2017 (which was a transition year when revenue growth slowed considerably as new pricing was rolled out), the business only added ten new hires. In 2018, Rightmove added sixteen new hires.

Strategic implications

While facing similar challenges, Rightmove's strategy stands in stark contrast to nearly every other major real estate portal around the globe. Zillow and REA Group spent tens-of-millions of dollars to acquire mortgage businesses, Scout24 acquired a finance comparison business for over $300 million, realtor.com acquired Opcity for $210 million, and Zoopla acquired a range of adjacent businesses for half-a-billion pounds.

The real estate portal business is evolving, moving closer to and getting involved in more parts of the transaction. But Rightmove has remained steadfast and stationary in its solitary focus (more on this in my Future of Real Estate Portals Report and 2018 Global Real Estate Portal Report).

Rightmove's revenue growth slowdown may sound similar to Zillow (as I wrote about last week), although the slowdown is less pronounced and immediate. But the trend and concern is the same.

Both portals are facing slowing growth in their core businesses. Zillow has invested heavily in new business lines (mortgage, rentals, Zillow Offers, and lead qualification to name a few) and appointed a new CEO, while Rightmove hasn't -- its eggs are still in the same basket.

Zillow's New Strategy: Insights, Implications, and Analysis

Last week, Zillow announced a major strategic shift: Along with a new CEO, it made clear that its top focus is its Zillow Offers iBuyer business.

Today's email covers the highlights of that announcement. Additionally, next week I'll be holding a 60-minute webinar that dives deep into the strategy, numbers, and implications of Zillow's latest move.

Premier agent growth grinds to a halt

The most striking statistic from Zillow's results is the lack of projected growth in its flagship, billion-dollar premier agent program (which accounts for 67 percent of its revenue). Guidance for the first quarter of 2019 is only 1.5 percent -- a steep decline from past quarters.

And on a full-year basis, Zillow projects its premier agent program will grow at 2 percent -- a flattening from past, double-digit growth.

Both of these projections come on the back of difficulties rolling out new premier agent products focused on lead quality over quantity.

But what's most striking is the suddenness of the decline. Going from double-digit to flat growth in the span of a year is significant. More than rollout issues, I believe Zillow has reached the upper limit of what it can charge agents for leads. Which is what's driving such a significant shift in strategy.

Expensive homes and a longer hold time

Last week I wrote about Zillow's unsold inventory in its Offers program, and the significance of longer hold times. The latest data highlights the same challenge.

The homes Zillow sells are less expensive: an average sale price of $292,000. However, the houses it holds in inventory are considerable more expensive, with an average value of $320,000.

This data point matches up exactly with the latest data from Phoenix, which shows a considerably higher average purchase price for Zillow compared to the other iBuyers.

The more expensive the home, the higher proportion of unsold inventory. It takes longer to sell more expensive homes, and it looks like Zillow is more than dabbling in the expensive end of the market. This is a key metric to watch!

Profit projections

Zillow released a detailed financial breakdown for its Offers business, including initial profit margins on its sold homes. Adjusted EBITDA, which backs out a number of costs including stock-based compensation, shows a per-home profit margin of 0.6 percent, lower than the stated goal of 2–3 percent.

(As a form of employee compensation, I believe stock-based compensation should be included in a true EBITDA calculation, so I've provided both options above.)

It's still early days, but this benchmarks current performance compared to where the business needs and wants to go in the future.

Strategic implications

I believe Zillow's guiding strategic principle is that it must be consumers' first destination in the home buying and selling process. Zillow's sustainable competitive advantage lies in its massive audience and strong position at the start of the consumer journey.

Think of this latest move as "Zestimate 2.0." The original Zestimate gave consumers a fun and helpful starting point when thinking about moving or buying a house. Now that online valuations are a commodity, Zillow needs to up the game: Instead of an estimate of value, how about an actual offer on your house? It's a compelling consumer proposition -- even if it simply serves the same purpose as the original Zestimate (attracting consumers at the start of the journey).

There's a whole lot more to discuss! If you want to listen and watch as I dive deep into the subject, register for next week's webinar.

Zillow Offers' most important metric

Later today, Zillow will announce its fourth quarter and full year 2018 results. Its activity as an iBuyer continues, and it recently overtook Offerpad to become the second-largest iBuyer in Phoenix. But my attention is focused on one key metric: Zillow's ability to quickly sell houses.

Why it matters: Zillow's goal is to hold houses for an average of 90 days. Any successful iBuyer needs to hold houses for as little time as possible, otherwise unsold inventory builds up, finance costs rise, and the whole model starts to blow up.

Overall activity grows; #2 in Phoenix

Zillow's overall iBuyer activity continues to grow, both nationally and in Phoenix (its biggest market). Based on the total number of homes purchased and sold, Zillow overtook Offerpad to claim the #2 spot in Phoenix for the month of January. Zillow is -- for the moment -- the second-largest iBuyer in the important Phoenix market.

Buying more than it's selling

While Zillow's overall activity continues to rise, its purchases are quickly outpacing sales. This is to be expected in the early months of a new market, but it's now eight months since launch. This is creating a growing inventory of unsold homes: around 350 in Phoenix as of February 12th.

It's natural for iBuyers to buy more houses than they sell when entering a new market. But over time, this Buy:Sell ratio is a critical metric for any iBuyer. Houses must be sold for the business to work!

Expensive homes, longer hold time

There are early signs that Zillow may be having difficulty selling houses. For iBuyers, time is money. The faster they can turn around and sell a house, the better.

The magic number for total holding time is around three months; Opendoor and Offerpad hold for between 80-100 days. Zillow currently has around 350 unsold houses in its inventory in Phoenix. Of those, it appears that around 110 homes have been owned for more than three months.

Part of the reason Zillow appears to have longer holding times may be the price of the homes it is purchasing. On average, it is buying more expensive homes than the other iBuyers in Phoenix.

Nationally, Zillow has purchased over 700 homes with an unsold inventory of over 500 homes.

The more expensive the home, the higher proportion of unsold inventory. It takes longer to sell more expensive homes, and it looks like Zillow is more than dabbling in the expensive end of the market.

Strategic implications

The key metric to watch is how well Zillow can sell its houses. Buying is relatively straight-forward; only once a house is sold is the entire business model complete.

To succeed as an iBuyer and appropriately manage its risk, Zillow needs to hold its houses for a minimum amount of time (on par with the other iBuyers), and avoid building up a large inventory of unsold homes.

It's still early days and Zillow has been quite aggressive in growing as fast as possible. But with its one year anniversary four months away, the pressure is on to demonstrate a consistent ability to buy -- and sell -- houses.

REA Group, Domain, and the non-battle for top spot

It's earnings season! In the past week, a number of portals announced their financial results, including REA Group and Domain, the two top Australian portals.

Why it matters: The numbers reveal interesting trends and insights, significantly around the difficulty of building meaningful adjacent businesses, and the non-battle between the #1 and #2 players in various markets.

Adjacent businesses are tough

Like many portals worldwide, REA Group and Domain each launched adjacent businesses, with goals to expand along more of the transaction, reduce consumer friction, and capture more revenue.

But as I've written before, the businesses have very different strategies. REA Group acquired a majority stake in an existing mortgage broking business, while Domain launched a number of joint ventures and partnerships. Different strategies, different outcomes.

REA's finance business continues to chug along, building revenue and generating meaningful earnings ($5.8 million EBITDA over the last six months).

By comparison, Domain's adjacent businesses (finance, insurance, and utility switching) generate similar revenues but with continued -- and mounting -- losses. The latest six months show a loss of $4.3 million.

REA's strategy is delivering a positive financial impact, while Domain's businesses are still in a heavy investment phase after more than a year.

The "battle" between #1 and #2

The battle between the #1 and #2 portal in each market is fascinating, and Australia is no exception.

One metric to compare portals is overall revenue generation. In general, the #2 portal generates between 25 and 40 percent the revenue of the leader (read my portal report), and that number doesn't fluctuate over time. In fact, in the case of REA Group and Domain, the leader is growing faster than the number two.

Domain is the underdog in Australia, and the evidence suggests it will remain that way. Overall situational awareness is important: It would be a mistake to assume Domain will overtake REA in any capacity.

U.K. portal wars -- what's changing?

Along the same lines, the real estate portals in the U.K. recently released traffic figures for the start of the year. It offers yet another fascinating glimpse into the competitive tension between top players -- and the complete lack of movement.

The figures released are for January 2019. And while the absolute numbers are generally rubbish, it's the comparison between portals and the year-on-year growth that's insightful.

Rightmove's numbers have hardly changed, and the delta between the number one and two is still the same. For all the investment on product, marketing, and inventory -- the all important consumer habits haven't shifted.

The variable, however, is the upstart portal OnTheMarket (read my past analysis). OTM has raised over £30m and is aggressively spending on marketing in order to drive traffic to its site. Its traffic has doubled since last year -- but does it matter?

For all of the tens-of-millions of pounds spent to build an alternative to the established portals, what impact is it having after launching four years ago? Zoopla's traffic is marginally down, but it reports that leads are up over 30 percent. The top two portals are equally and exactly as dominant as they were a year ago.

Strategic implications

There are a number of key takeaways for portals around the world:

• Launching successful adjacent businesses is hard. It takes an incredible amount of investment, and there are a variety of execution strategies.

• The evidence doesn't suggest that the #2 portal can overtake the leader -- let alone make a dent in its leadership position. It's not a horse race; it's static trench warfare.

• Trying to launch a new portal and compete against the leaders is at best expensive, and at worst futile. Consumer habits are hard to change.

Zoopla's private equity strategy shift

Zoopla recently announced that it has removed all non-property advertising from its listing pages. This is one of several significant strategy changes after its acquisition by private equity firm Silver Lake.

Why it matters: The benefit of being a private company is that Zoopla can be more aggressive, focus on longer-term opportunities, and be less sensitive to a stock price that focuses on short-term earnings growth. This move is an example of that strategy in action.

The advertising revenue dilemma

A number of real estate portals generate revenue from non-property advertising on their listing pages. Zoopla's move puts it in line with arch-rival Rightmove by banishing banner ads from listing pages.

Note: REA Group and Domain do not have advertising on featured property listings, but do have non-property advertising on "normal" listings.

Banner advertising can be an important source of revenue for portals. However, it comes at the expense of the user experience. If a visitor clicks on a banner ad, their attention is diverted away from the property listing, reducing its effectiveness.

Often times user experience loses out to finances, especially for publicly listed companies under pressure to deliver revenue growth. And given that core revenue growth is slowing at a number of mature portals, the decision is even harder. But for a private company that's focused on the long-term opportunity, the decision is easy.

A shift in strategy

Aside from jettisoning nearly its entire management team, Zoopla has been up to quite a bit post-acquisition; there is the appearance of a significant change in strategy.

Zoopla's aggressive diversification strategy has been a leading factor making it unique in the world of real estate portals. It's been a world leader in acquiring adjacent businesses to dramatically grow revenues (for more on this, check out my 2018 Global Real Estate Portal Report).

The company's narrative has centered around a cross-sell strategy, where acquisitions are deeply integrated across Zoopla's network of web properties.

I've questioned the effectiveness of the cross-sell strategy, most recently in my Future of Real Estate Portals Report. The evidence didn't suggest a runaway success when it came to integration and cross-sell synergies.

Notably (and here's the big strategy shift), Zoopla's new managing director recently stated that, "Going forward, the former comparison and property businesses of ZPG will be managed largely separately, but we will continue to achieve synergies between the two wherever it is appropriate and relevant.”

To me, that sounds like a "back to basics" approach with a deep focus on the core product: tools for agents with a fantastic consumer experience. Cross-sell synergies and deep integration across the portfolio are taking a backseat.

Which is an interesting development for Scout24, which recently purchased financial comparison site Finanzcheck for $330 million, and Domain, which has been running the Zoopla diversification playbook for some time. Oops?

Strategic implications

Public companies that are focused on short-term revenue growth are at a distinct disadvantage to private companies backed by private equity. And private equity is getting more involved in the sector:

• General Atlantic acquires a majority stake in Hemnet, December 2016.

• Silver Lake acquires Zoopla for £2.2 billion, May 2018.

• General Atlantic invests $120 million in Property Finder, November 2018.

• Apax Partners offers $2.5 billion NZD for Trade Me, December 2018.

• Rumors circulate that several private equity firms are looking at Germany's top portal, Scout24.

It's going to be difficult to compete with private equity-backed portals given their fundamental advantage: they can be more aggressive, focus on longer-term opportunities, and be less sensitive to a stock price that focuses on short-term earnings growth.

Trade Me's private equity adventure

In recent weeks, Trade Me, New Zealand's leading classifieds and marketplace portal, has received two, multi-billion-dollar buy-out offers from private equity firms.

Why it matters: There is a growing trend of private equity getting involved in portals around the world, which allows these businesses more freedom of action as private companies -- but with significant change.

Private equity and portals

Trade Me is New Zealand's leading portal, with property, automotive, and jobs classifieds and a general marketplace business. I worked there as head of strategy between 2012 and 2016.

British firm Apax Partners and American firm Hellman & Friedman have both offered around $2.5 billion NZD for the business, a 25 percent premium to the existing share price.

This news follows several other examples of private equity getting into the (property) portal business:

• General Atlantic acquires a majority stake in Hemnet, December 2016.

• Silver Lake acquires Zoopla for £2.2 billion, May 2018.

• General Atlantic invests $120 million in Property Finder, November 2018.

Slowing growth

Since its public debut eight years ago, Trade Me has grown revenues 100 percent and net profit 39 percent.

Revenue growth has slowed over the years, especially recently, in a story reminiscent of Rightmove's growth dilemma.

The stock price has seen a steady rise with its ups and downs, but has been relatively flat since 2017.

In August of 2018, Trade Me announced a special dividend to return $100 million in capital to investors. This comes on top of the normal dividend, which represents around 80 percent of profits. Returning capital at that scale can be a signal that the company has run out of ideas.

Many businesses believe it is more beneficial to reinvest profits to improve efficiency, expand reach, create new products and services as well as improve existing ones, and further separate themselves from competitors.

Like Rightmove, Trade Me is in a difficult position. With growth slowing, it is less likely to make big investments for fear of depressing earnings and upsetting investors. It's a delicate, public-company balance. Enter private equity...

Upside potential, with change

Private equity invests in businesses for one and only reason: to make money. It's clear that these P.E. firms have evaluated Trade Me's business and believe there is significant upside potential under new ownership and management.

But significant growth comes with significant change. When Silver Lake acquired Zoopla in the U.K., nearly the entire executive team was let go as part of the restructuring. It's the same story in Sweden, when General Atlantic appointed a new management team after acquiring a majority stake in Hemnet.

Strategic implications

If consummated, a private equity takeover of Trade Me would have a number of implications for the business, competitors, and the entire online ecosystem:

• A private ownership structure will allow Trade Me to be more aggressive, focus on longer-term opportunities, and be less sensitive to a stock price that focuses on short-term earnings growth.

• Private equity firms demand a return on their investment, and this transaction will be no exception. Expect costs to be trimmed, earnings maximized, and a more aggressive posture on pricing and monetization.

• If you're competing with Trade Me, expect a dramatically different business to emerge that's tougher, less conservative, and more willing to throw its weight around.

Trade Me has long had a friendly, home-grown feel in New Zealand. New owners -- and new demands on the business -- may change the equation.

Zillow's billion dollar seller lead opportunity

Last week, Zillow announced its latest financial results, and the stock dropped 25 percent (losing $2 billion in value). But the story everyone is missing is the Zillow Offers iBuying business, and the huge potential of seller leads.

Why it matters: Last week I was quoted on MarketWatch saying, “If you’re thinking about Zillow doing iBuying and you’re not thinking about seller leads, you’re thinking about it the wrong way.” Seller leads are the real billion dollar opportunity.

Slowing premier agent growth

Here's the reason why Zillow's stock tanked 25 percent last week, in one chart:

Zillow's premier agent program accounts for over 70 percent of its revenue, or nearly $1 billion. Growth is slowing down. I'm not sure why this surprised anyone on Wall Street; I've been writing about it since early this year (Zillow's revenue growth slows and Zillow's strategic shift to iBuying and mortgages). I believe it's the primary reason Zillow has aggressively expanded into adjacent businesses.

The value of seller leads

Zillow's iBuyer business continues to grow, and the latest results crystalize the opportunity in seller leads.

Zillow says that since launch, nearly 20,000 homeowners have taken direct action on its platform to sell their home. Of those, it has purchased just about 1 percent of homes (around 200). That leaves about 19,800 leads who remain interested in selling their homes.

If Zillow simply sold those leads at $100 a pop, they're worth nearly $2 million.

But the real opportunity is giving those leads to premier agents in exchange for an industry-standard referral fee, about 1 percent, if the property sells (similar to the Opcity business model).

Here's the kicker: Zillow claims about 45 percent of consumers that go through the Zillow Offers funnel end up listing their home. That's a high conversion rate reflective of a high intent to sell; about 10 times higher than Opcity's conversion rate.

Assuming a 1 percent referral fee, a $250,000 home, and a conversion rate of 45 percent, those 19,800 leads are worth $22 million in revenue to Zillow, almost all profit.

Compare that to the estimated profit of its iBuyer business (1.5 percent net profit), which, on 200 houses, is $750,000. The value of the seller leads is worth almost 30 times the profit from flipping houses!

Total addressable market

Zillow says that based on its current purchase criteria, if Zillow Offers were available in the top 200 metro areas in the U.S., sellers of nearly half of the homes sold in 2017 across the entire nation would have been eligible to receive offers from it to buy their home directly. That equates to around 2.75 million homes annually.

Last quarter, Zillow said that it received offer requests from around 15 percent of the total for-sale stock in the Phoenix market. Interestingly, that number increased to 25 percent in September and 35 percent in October. That's a reflection of the strong lead generation power of Zillow Offers across its various web properties.

Based on these numbers, if Zillow goes national (200 metro areas) and sees 35 percent of the for-sale stock, it would receive 962,500 offer requests each year.

The billion dollar opportunity

Taking the latest numbers, which have been validated to the tune of 20,000 offer requests over five months in two markets, the total opportunity becomes clear with a national rollout.

Seller leads can be a billion dollar business for Zillow if you believe the current numbers. Even if a national conversion rate is lower, or the % of for-sale stock fluctuates, it's still worth several hundred million dollars in revenue annually.

Should Zillow even buy houses?

Given the value of the seller leads, should Zillow even be in the business of buying houses? Yes, if it wants a credible product for consumers. The real question is: What proportion of houses should Zillow actually buy?

Zillow's "big picture" is 5 percent national market share, which equates to buying around 10 percent of all offer requests (it is currently buying around 1 percent of offer requests). At a 1.5 percent net margin, that's around $1 billion in profit.

But to reach that scale, Zillow would need to spend $68 billion to purchase 275,000 houses annually. Assuming an average holding time of 90 days, it would need a credit line of $17 billion to fund the effort. Big numbers.

A more realistic target would be to only purchase around 1 percent of requests. Nationally, that would be 27,500 homes, which is only around double what Opendoor is currently doing, so it's feasible.

In any case, the point is clear: Zillow doesn't need to actually buy and sell a lot of houses for this model to generate significant profits for the company in a national rollout.

Strategic implications

Zillow is a lead generation machine, and its recent foray into iBuying is no exception. 

If you're in the industry and your value proposition to agents is seller lead generation, there's a new game in town. Zillow will be able to generate a massive volume of seller leads with higher intent than almost any other source. If successful, this will have significant implications across the industry.

Further analysis

If you're looking to dive deeper into the world of iBuyers, consider the following:

• iBuyer Business Model Overview and Analysis: all of my free research and reports on the iBuyer space.

• iBuyer Intelligence Briefing (Recording): a 60-minute conference call I conducted on the latest iBuyer news, key insights, and strategic implications for the real estate industry.

• Phoenix iBuyer Report: the only source for accurate, timely iBuyer market data for Phoenix. Available as a monthly subscription.

Mobile contact form analysis

Inspired by a recent talk on the importance of mobile experiences, I've conducted an analysis of the mobile contact forms for the big real estate portals. These are the forms that turn visitors into leads.

Why it matters: Mobile is huge. My research of the top real estate portals shows that, on average, 70 percent of leads come from mobile. Mobile contact forms should be optimized to be as efficient as possible.

Notable UX highlights

Pre-selecting checkboxes is a real-world example of behavioral science (specifically nudge theory) in action. In the U.S., Zillow and realtor.com take different approaches to encourage (or discourage) users to request additional financing information. Overseas, Propertyfinder, PropertyGuru and Otodom do the same when it comes to signing users up for property alerts.

Trade Me has the unique distinction of having the easiest and most difficult mobile form. On the positive side, it is the shortest form from my survey, simply asking for a message. On the negative side, it requires users to sign in to send a message. Luckily, almost the entire population of New Zealand is a member of Trade Me, but in the case of a new user (or someone who isn't logged in), this introduces a significant form completion hurdle.

The more required fields, the more difficult to complete a form. I know Germans can be formal at times, but does salutation really need to be a required field for ImmoScout24?

Redfin has split its form across three screens, each quite simple. But the additional effort to click a submission button three times instead of one, plus additional page load time, adds significant (and unnecessary) overhead.

Hemnet has decided to do away with forms all together and simply list an email address, leaving communication entirely in the user's hands!

Mobile usage

Many thanks to the portals that were willing to share their data with me (both anonymously and on the record). The collective intelligence is a benefit to all!

The percentage of leads that come from mobile (native app or mobile web) varies greatly: from 40 percent in Poland (Otodom) to 91 percent in Singapore (PropertyGuru). 

The biggest markets average somewhere in the middle: around 65 percent in the U.K. (Zoopla) to 72 percent in Australia (Domain).

On average, around 70 percent of all leads come from a mobile device, underlining the importance of a smooth mobile user experience.

User experience best practices

Best Practices for Mobile Form Design is an incredible resource for designing simple and effective mobile forms. Looking at the mobile forms from this survey, there are several best practices to remember:

• Avoid dropdown menus (dropdowns are especially bad for mobile).

• Don't slice data fields (when asking for a first and last name).

• Mark optional fields instead of mandatory ones (don't use asterisks).

A number of real estate portals do a great job at keeping the mobile experience simple and easy by following best practices and keeping the form as short as possible. My hope is that next year the forms will be even easier for users to complete. And if you're wondering just how important leads are, just ask Zillow.

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Before entering the high-octane world of real estate tech strategy, I was a product guy. My master's degree was in human-computer interaction, and I spent the first years of my career as a user interface designer. So I'm passionate about great design!

Why incumbents can't beat Zillow (and the power of network effects)

Recently, several large incumbents have announced big consumer plays aimed at Zillow: Rocket Homes' new consumer portal, and Keller Williams acquiring SmarterAgent as part of its consumer strategy.

Why it matters: Zillow benefits from practically unbeatable network effects in the consumer space. Both of these moves ignore basic strategic principles of playing to your strengths, and picking battles you can win.

Network effects and wide moats

In his best-selling book Zero to One, Peter Thiel provides an elegant definition of network effects: “Network effects makes a product more useful as more people use it. For example, if all your friends are on Facebook, it makes sense for you to join Facebook, too.”

Online marketplaces such as Craigslist, LinkedIn, and eBay are classic examples of businesses that benefit from network effects. The more people that use them -- buyers and sellers -- the more valuable the service becomes.

Businesses that have the benefit of network effects are incredibly difficult to displace. As Tren Griffin writes on a16z, "Nothing scales as well as a software business, and nothing creates a moat for that business more effectively than network effects."

Zillow benefits from the power of network effects. By developing the most popular means of searching for real estate, it attracts buyers and sellers in a virtuous cycle. It has cemented an incredibly strong position with a near-impenetrable moat from competition. This is Zillow's key strength.

Comfortably number one

Logically, the most likely competitor to challenge Zillow's dominance is realtor.com. It is the runner-up portal backed by a multi-billion dollar international media company (News Corp) that also owns several top portals around the world.

But as I've shown in the past, Zillow's ever-important traffic dominance remains constant, undisturbed by realtor.com or anyone else.

If anyone could dislodge Zillow's dominance, it would be realtor.com. But it hasn't; not for lack of trying, but rather an understanding of network effects and the futility of such an effort (remember, it owns the top portal in Australia and knows the power of network effects better than most). News Corp doesn't want to overtake Zillow because it knows it's impossible.

Strategy basics: play to your strengths

Sound strategic planning requires two key elements: leveraging your strengths, and playing where you can win.

A business should build its strategy around an understanding of its key competitive advantages and operational strengths. Those strengths should be applied in areas where it can win (typically where its competitors are weak).

To illustrate this point further, the following chart looks at four examples of Zillow and realtor.com smartly leveraging their strengths and exploiting their competitor's weaknesses.

Less experienced strategists can be reactionary. They see a threat and attempt to counter it, on a battlefield where they are at a distinct disadvantage to a competitor. Keller Williams and Rocket Homes have done just this; choosing to do battle with Zillow on its home turf, where it is strong and they are weak.

Keller Williams and Rocket Homes

Zillow's strength lies in its massive consumer reach through its search portal. This business benefits from strong network effects and has a wide moat to protect it from competition.

Keller Williams is building a new consumer-facing app to "compete directly with search giants like Zillow and Redfin." Rocket Homes is launching a portal to "rival Zillow," which will "let consumers search for homes and apply for loans."

In their efforts build end-to-end homebuying platforms, both businesses have decided to go from positions of strength (mortgages and agent reach) to ones of weakness (consumer listing portal). It's the most difficult battle possible.

What Rocket Homes and Keller Williams are missing in their end-to-end platforms -- the consumer search portal -- is nearly impossible to deliver because of Zillow's dominance and the power of network effects. There's a certain futility in going after Zillow (or Facebook, or Ebay, or Craigslist).

Strategic implications

Keller Williams and Rocket Homes (part of Quicken Loans), are both incredibly large and powerful businesses; Keller Williams has the largest network of agents, and Quicken Loans is the largest retail lender in the U.S. But in the changing world of real estate, they aren't playing to their strengths.

All businesses should know their strengths. Deeply understand your competitive advantage and what value you offer -- and focus on that. 

By going directly after Zillow, Keller Williams and Rocket Homes demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the power of network effects. There's simply no purpose for these new consumer portals to exist, because they don't meaningfully benefit consumers.

In the accelerating race to build end-to-end real estate ecosystems, businesses should focus on leveraging their strengths to gain advantage over competitors and deliver true value to consumers.

Opcity, lead conversion, and the journey down the funnel

Last week, News Corp, owner of realtor.com in the U.S. and the majority owner of REA Group in Australia, announced the $210 million acquisition of lead qualification service Opcity.

Why it matters: With this acquisition, realtor.com dives deeper into the lead conversion funnel in a major way. Opcity features a referral fee business model where customers are worth 36x more than a lead -- which highlights why the U.S. portals are diving deeper into the funnel.

Lead generation vs. lead qualification

Zillow and realtor.com are both lead generators. They drive traffic to their web sites, advertise real estate agents, and generate leads in the form of consumers who are looking to buy a house. This is the lion’s share of their revenues and the core of their business models.

The conversion of leads to actual, paying customers is left up to individual real estate agents, and nominally occurs offline. But this is changing.

In Zillow’s last earnings update, it shared its goal of "moving beyond lead generation and actively evolving toward being a deeper funnel real estate industry partner.” It launched a new, super-charged concierge service where Zillow sales reps qualify leads before matching them with a premier agent.

News Corp’s acquisition of Opcity is the same move: deeper down the funnel. Opcity takes raw leads, qualifies them, and then matches them with an agent. It does not charge per lead, like Zillow or realtor.com, but charges a referral fee for any leads that turn into paying customers (typically 30%-35% of a buyer’s agent commission).

The cost per lead on Zillow ranges from $20 to $220. I estimate the average to be around $55 per lead. For Opcity, assuming a $250,000 home, a buyer’s agent commission of 2.75%, and a 30% referral fee, each customer is worth around $2,000 — or 36x higher than the value of a lead.

Providing a superior experience, to everyone

The rationale for Zillow and realtor.com to move deeper down the funnel is simple: a better experience.

In the case of both Zillow's concierge service and Opcity, consumers are able to speak to a human being faster, and are matched (not just sent) to an agent faster. Agents are matched with pre-qualified consumers, saving them time and energy. Plus the return on investment for the concierge model is far superior to simply buying leads.

At first glance the Opcity and referral fee model may seem like a bad deal. Why would an agent pay 30%-35% of their commission (around $2,000 for an average transaction) for a referral when they can buy leads for a fraction that price? 

It comes down to the math. Buying leads and converting them to customers costs an agent, on average, around $7,500 per customer -- compared to $2,000 for a customer through Opcity.

It all comes down to the conversion rate. Operating at scale and singularly focused on doing one job, Opcity and Zillow have the scale and technology advantage to convert leads more quickly and efficiently. They have call centers, teams, data, and a long list of agents if the first one contacted doesn’t answer the phone. It's no surprise their conversion rate is higher.

A big revenue opportunity

So how big is the opportunity from a revenue standpoint? (The analysis below is based on Zillow, simply because there is so much more data available, but the same logic applies to realtor.com and Opcity.)

Back in FY16, when Zillow last reported the figure, it generated around 17 million leads during the year. If we assume Opcity’s 4% lead conversation rate (between 3x-5x the industry norm of 1%) and a 30% referral fee, those 17 million leads are worth $1.4 billion in revenue to Zillow (about 50% higher than the ~ $930 million in current premier agent revenues today).

Both Zillow and realtor.com can better monetize their leads if they qualify them and adopt a referral fee structure. Realtor.com now has that option through Opcity.

Given the industry upheaval it would create, it's unlikely that Zillow would change its fee structure. Rather, it will likely approach the same commission rate through the existing premier agent program and share-of-voice bidding system (similar to Google AdWords). Zillow will get there in the end, but through a different path: by providing more value to agents and growing the revenue per lead.

Implications for real estate portals

The core of this entire model is the buyer lead, which only works in markets where there are buyer’s agents. In international markets like the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand — where there are only listing agents — buyer leads are not nearly as valuable.

A similar lead qualification service still has merit for seller leads, when consumers are looking for a listing agent (see Homelight, OpenAgent, or REA Group’s Agent Finder service). But real estate portals generate significantly fewer seller leads with a lower intent.

To sum it up for portals: Pay close attention to lead qualification if you operate in a market where you can monetize buyer leads. It's a superior experience with a big revenue opportunity.

Strategic implications

For anyone involved in this sector, there are a number of key takeaways:

• A concierge, lead qualification model provides a superior experience for consumers and agents. And for agents, it delivers a superior return on investment.
• Real estate portals like Zillow and realtor.com can monetize qualified leads much better than raw leads. More value to agents = more revenue.
• The recurring theme here, which I discuss often, is the importance of people in the process. Augmenting -- not replacing -- humans with technology is the winning formula.
• Lead conversion is important! Small teams can't compete, but the larger platform plays (Keller Williams, Compass, etc) can absolutely build products (technology + people) that improve lead conversion at scale. But are they?

If you work for a real estate portal or lead generator and want to capitalize on the lead conversion opportunity, I can help. I currently advise a select number of real estate portals on an exclusive basis (to avoid competitive issues). Drop me a line if you’re interested in exploring the opportunity for your market.

Analyzing the top portals' financial results

Over the past month, a number of the biggest real estate portals around the world have released financial results: Zillow Group, REA Group, Domain, News Corp, Scout24 Group, and Trade Me.

Why it matters: While the results themselves are fairly dry and self-congratulatory, it does give a glimpse into business performance. When viewed as a whole, the results show a number of interesting trends, and give me a chance to highlight the insights behind the numbers, and the numbers behind the story.

Revenue growth comparison

Overall revenue growth sets the foundation for this analysis, and it's quite varied around the world.

The Australian portals are seeing exceptional growth due to the magic of vendor-funded marketing. In the U.S., both Zillow and Realtor.com are starting to slow down, with Zillow investing in adjacent revenue streams. And in Germany, ImmobilienScout24 sees a positive result after a period of relative flatness.

What blows me away, however, is the massive result in Australia. REA Group and Domain recorded huge revenue gains, and nearly all of it from depth products.

The growth strategy isn't rocket science. REA Group generated $100 million in additional revenue by selling bigger photos.

It's worth noting what is driving the revenue growth in each market: more customers, or a higher average revenue per advertiser (ARPA). In the case of REA, Domain, and Trade Me Property, it is all ARPA, which are customers (agents and home sellers) paying more for each listing. However, IS24's revenue growth is entirely driven by an increase in customers and flat ARPA.

In other words, the portals in Australia and New Zealand are fully penetrated but can still raise prices. In Germany, IS24 is struggling to increase revenue per customer, but still managed to sign up more customers over the past six months.

In my latest report, The Future of Real Estate Portals, I introduced the following portal value curve. In essence, it states that product development is becoming more expensive, delivering less value to customers.

The key takeaway is where the revenue growth is coming from: low effort, high value products that promote agents and properties (essentially larger photos displayed more prominently). That's where the big gains are coming from.

The higher-effort products (predictive analytics, lead qualification, etc) aren't a significant contributor to revenue.

Catching the leaders

On a recent call with an investment analyst, we discussed the opportunity for a runner-up portal to overtake the leader. Can Domain take market share from REA in Australia? Can Realtor.com catch up to Zillow in the U.S.?

The evidence suggests that the answer is a resounding no.

The data from the past two years shows an uncannily steady state between the leading and runner-up portals in both markets.

In the core residential listings business, Domain has remained at 27% the size of leader REA. Both business are growing at the same rate; nothing is changing.

In the U.S., the runner-up portal, Realtor.com, has actually lost a small amount of ground when it comes to growth. Zillow is growing revenues faster.

In the important realm of traffic and consumer eyeballs, Zillow and Realtor.com have remained constant for the past three years. Even with all of the hoopla against Zillow for raising prices in NYC, agent revolts, and increased pressure by Realtor.com, it hasn't meant a thing in terms of overall traffic and revenue numbers.

There's a big difference between a catchy headline and the facts of a situation. Always look for the facts.

Mixed results in adjacent revenue streams

The final area of interest is around portals' expansion into adjacent revenue streams. If you follow my work, you know this topic is of particular interest to me. You may read more of my thoughts, specifically around Zillow, in my analysis of Zillow's Strategic Shift.

The question is no longer whether real estate portals are expanding into adjacent revenue streams, but how they are doing it. There are a variety of strategies at play, with vastly different results.

In Australia, both REA Group and Domain are expanding in different ways. REA bought a mortgage broker in 2017, Smartline, while Domain has launched a trio of new services (mortgage, insurance, and utility switching) via joint ventures. The financial results couldn't be more different.

Both business units are generating decent revenues (more so in the case of Domain, because the overall revenue base is smaller), but only one is profitable. REA's acquisition of an existing business running at scale is returning immediate profits, while Domain remains in the start-up zone of continual (and significant) investments: $27.1 million in FY18.

A deeper look at REA and Domains' mortgage products highlights one final observation. Both are quite similar: well-integrated on the listing pages, a robust loan calculator, and then...

Spot the difference? REA's (top) call to action is a phone number, while Domain's (bottom) call to action is the start of a long online form (without even the first field pre-populated like it was on the calculator -- shame!).

This highlights the importance of consumer psychology in transactions of this magnitude, a topic I recently wrote about in How Psychology is Holding Back Real Estate Tech. REA recognizes the importance of actual human beings in this process, and puts them front and center.

If you have an interest in Zillow's recent acquisition of a mortgage brokerage, look no further than REA Group's Australian acquisition to see how it might play out. Purchased over a year ago, the business is profitable, generating good revenue at good profit margins.

Strategic implications

These latest financial results highlight a few key takeaways:

• Revenue growth is still primarily driven by core premium products that increase exposure for agents and property listings.
• The runner-up portals are staying in the runner-up position. There is no data to suggest they are catching the leaders in their markets (this shouldn't be a surprise).
• Launching into adjacent revenue streams is not a sure thing. Initial investment is very high with no guarantee of success. There are a number of different paths to take, and the initial evidence suggests acquiring existing businesses is the most effective strategy.

A Deeper Look at Zillow's Instant Offer Numbers

Zillow's Q2 financial results include some insight into its Instant Offers business and traction to date, but the data is five weeks old. Let's take a look at the most updated data; it's more interesting.

All of the data below is for Phoenix, is based on public records, and is accurate as of August 8, 2018 (yesterday).

A quickly growing business

Zillow announced that it bought 19 homes during the second quarter (through June 30). The current total is 62. That's an additional 43 homes purchased in July and the first week of August. A good ramp up.

Of those 62 homes, 10 have sold, with the remainder either under contract, for sale, or coming soon.

Zillow is purchasing more expensive homes than its iBuyer competitors in Phoenix (Opendoor and Offerpad). The average purchase price for the 62 homes Zillow purchased is $324,000, 25 percent higher than Opendoor.

It's worth noting that the median purchase price is materially higher than the estimates being used by analysts and what was suggested in Zillow's Q1 announcement, $257,000.

For the iBuyer model to work, the home must be sold for more than its purchase price. I call that price appreciation. As a percentage, the price appreciation on the 10 homes Zillow has sold is 3.3 percent.

But because Zillow is purchasing more expensive homes than its competitors, when translated to a dollar value the amount is about equal to Opendoor at $9,600 per home.

Keep in mind that this number is not the net profit per transaction. It does notinclude any of the costs associated with buying and selling a home, including agent fees (which are considerable), buyer concessions, finance, holding, and repair costs.

Moving fast

The 10 homes Zillow sold moved very quickly. The sample size is small so it shouldn't be used as an assumption for the business at scale.

Having said that, of those 10 homes it has taken an average of 20 days to get a contract, and an additional 22 days on average to close. These sales are not indicative of long-term numbers. They are quick sales by definition so they have unusually low times on market.

Strategic implications

A few takeaways to keep an eye on:

• Zillow is ramping up fast, buying 43 homes in the last five weeks. It's serious.
• Zillow is buying more expensive homes than its competitors and what the market predicted. It's still early days, so let's see if this changes over time.
• As a dollar value, price appreciation on the ten homes sold is in line with expectations and local competition.

Real time data

You may have noticed the market reacting strongly to Zillow's Q2 announcement, which contained five-week-old data. If you're a serious investor and don't want to live in the past, drop me a line.

Zillow's Strategic Shift

Zillow announced its Q2 financial results today, along with the acquisition of a mortgage broking business.

Why it matters: This is another big move that signals Zillow's clear intent to get closer to real estate transactions.

A major move into mortgages

In my opinion, the most interesting part of today's announcement is Zillow's acquisition of a mortgage broker, Mortgage Lenders of America LLC.

Why? Two reasons:

• This is exactly the same move REA Group pulled off in Australia last year when it acquired the mortgage broker Smartline (both businesses even have roughly the same number of employees).
• In addition to its Instant Offers program, this is another huge example of Zillow moving closer to the transaction in a big way.

Closer to the transaction

In my latest report, The Future of Real Estate Portals, I provide a strategic framework for how to think about portals expanding into new businesses. There are two ways: getting involved in more of the transaction, and getting closer to the transaction.

There are two big examples of real estate portals making big moves to get closer to the transaction: Zillow's Instant Offers program, and REA Group's acquisition of mortgage broker Smartline.

Zillow's announcement today is yet another major -- and not unexpected -- move in that direction. That's a big deal; it's a clear signal of intent and strategy, and one that no other portal is matching around the globe -- yet.

A strategic shift

What we are seeing is the result of a strategic shift at Zillow, likely started in 2017, and now moving full speed ahead. It is an intentional move to get closer to the transaction is all areas of the business, and move away from simply being a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. 

As I mention in my report, it is a move from search engine to service engine. And it's a move to larger revenue pools. Zillow's existing mortgage lead gen business generates about $4 per lead. Mortgage origination can generate hundreds to thousands of dollars per customer.

It is a big move. While all the iBuyers talk about providing mortgage solutions to streamline the process, no one has purchased an existing mortgage broker. This isn't testing the waters; it's jumping straight in and hoping for the best.

Premier agent growth as catalyst 

I believe one of the big drivers of Zillow's strategic shift was the slowing growth of its flagship premier agent program. As I've written about in the past, it is naturally slowing down.

To Zillow's credit, with slowing growth in its main revenue driver, it did two things:

• Made the aforementioned strategic shift to get closer to the transaction through Instant Offers and Mortgage lending.
• Made significant investments into its premier agent program to improve lead quality and value to agents.

The first action opened up new areas of growth. The second arrested the decline and stabilized the premier agent program.

Strategic implications

There are a number of key takeaways from Zillow's latest move:

• Moves to get closer to the transaction are people-intensive. At scale, Zillow's Instant Offers will have hundreds of employees on the ground. Mortgage Lenders of America has around 300 employees. Unlike a classic marketplace business, these new growth areas are expensive and low margin.
• This is going to happen everywhere. Expect every major real estate portal to get deeper into the mortgage and finance space.
• Zillow is not standing still. Its business today looks quite different than it did 12 months ago. Does yours?

Rightmove's Growth Continues to Slow

Rightmove announced its half-year financial results today, with revenue growth continuing to slow (down to 9.7 percent).

Why it matters: This is a continuation of the "Rightmove dilemma" of a narrow strategy with slowing growth, and no other revenue streams. It's neither good nor bad, but a fact that investors (and my readers) should be aware of.

A narrow strategy with slowing growth

Rightmove, the U.K.'s leading real estate portal, is a company that I frequently analyze. It is a global leader in the field with a unique, focused strategy.

In my latest report, The Future of Real Estate Portals, I discuss the Rightmove dilemma extensively. Unlike many other portals, it has not diversified its products or revenue streams beyond the core listing advertising business.

The strategy has served the business well for the past decade, but the strategy is beginning to show limitations. Revenue growth is slowing, and today's announcement shows a continuation of that trend.

The two key numbers

The key narrative is growth, with two key numbers: revenue growth and ARPA (average revenue per advertiser) growth.

Once an additional decimal is added, Rightmove's results show annual revenue growth of 9.7 percent (which it rounded up to 10 percent). This is the lowest number in years, and is the first time it has dipped below 10 percent.

Because Rightmove has not diversified its revenue streams, revenue growth is almost entirely driven by ARPA growth (how much it is able to charge its customers). This number, too, is dropping.

ARPA growth for the half-year is down to 8.3 percent, and is projected to stay at that rate for the full year. Once again, this is the lowest number in years. Rightmove can only raise its prices so much.

Implications for Rightmove

This is not the demise of Rightmove. It is still an incredibly strong business, with nearly-impregnable network effects that will likely protect its core business for years. The dilemma is about growth, and the right strategy to match its ambitions. Its growth prospects are challenged.

Rightmove is bumping up against the glass ceiling of price rises; growth is slowing. Slowing revenue growth is leading to tighter cost control, which could inhibit its ability to invest for the future.

Rightmove has not diversified its revenue streams. Nothing new is taking up the slack in the revenue slowdown. It has been promoting new premium features and new products for over a year, but they are not stopping the decline in growth.

Implications for real estate portals

For other real estate portals, there are a number of takeaways to this story:

• Despite your market dominance and powerful network effects, there is a limit to how much revenue you can extract from your customers each year. It will slow over time.

• Additional premium products and services take more effort to build, and are valued less by your customers.

• Continued revenue growth comes from diversification into adjacent revenue streams.

Zillow's revenue growth slows

My analysis on Realtor.com earlier this week surfaced a particularly interesting chart on Zillow's revenue growth. The slowing growth piqued my interest, so I dug deeper into the data and strategic implications.

Zillow has been growing fast over the past few years. The company topped $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time in 2017. But the gravy train can't last forever. How big can Zillow really get?

In its FY17 annual report, Zillow had this to say about its future growth prospects: We see significant opportunity to expand our addressable market over the long term. As we dive deeper in the funnel we see more opportunity to increase the number of transactions and commissions to our partners. 

Many people think Zillow is right at the beginning of its journey, and that it is just scratching the surface of the U.S. market opportunity. However, the numbers tell a different, more nuanced story.

Sources of growth

Zillow generates the vast majority of its revenues (71%) from its premier agent program, which is essentially lead gen for buyers agents.

Other revenue streams, such as display advertising, mortgage leads, and rentals, form a small percentage of overall revenue. Zillow is very much a business centered around -- and reliant on -- its premier agent program. So it is natural to focus on premier agent revenue growth to frame the future prospects of the business.

The key question is: How much runway is left for Zillow to monetize and grow its premier agent business? Are we just at the beginning, or is the opportunity maturing?

Premier agent growth slows

Zillow's year-on-year premier agent revenue growth, broken down by quarter, shows a clear trend of slowing growth. Keep in mind this is off a large revenue base ($760 million annually) so is to be expected. But the trend is clear: growth is slowing.

The chart below shows the same metric, but with absolute year-on-year dollar growth, instead of a percentage. After running up to a high in Q2 2017, the growth rate is dropping, and Zillow is forecasting that trend to continue.

We can also look at the numbers from a full-year financial perspective. The chart below shows steady year-on-year growth in the premier agent program, but Zillow's own guidance shows that it is -- for the first time -- forecasting a slowdown in that growth on an annual basis.

Most businesses eventually reach a terminal growth rate, or a rate at which the business grows in perpetuity. At property portals around the world -- in mature markets where the leaders have effectively saturated the market -- this rate ranges from around five to 15 percent.

Zillow's premier agent program hasn't reached maturity yet, but it appears to have hit its peak growth rate. Now the question is, where will it settle?

Strategic implications: Where to from here?

With Zillow's primary revenue stream slowing, it needs to look at new revenue streams to drive future growth.

One area where Zillow is seeing strong growth is in rentals, where it saw a 124 percent increase in revenue. This is undoubtedly driven by the decision to start charging for rental listings on StreetEasy in NYC in July of last year. You can see the corresponding bump in revenue below.

In 2018, expect Zillow to begin aggressively monetizing new revenue streams. My guess would be a continued focus on rentals and back office tools (dotloop), with additional efforts around new construction and mortgages. This is relatively consistent with the strategy of its international peers.

Also expect Zillow to continue to aggressively monetize agents. By its own admission, "as we dive deeper in the funnel," is code for doing more and charging more. Zillow will attempt to increase the value of existing leads while becoming the technology partner of agencies with transaction management tools like dotloop.

Zillow's slowing premier agent revenue growth will put pressure on the business to develop and exploit new revenue streams. Expect that to be the theme of 2018.

Australia's REA Group vs. Domain

Key points

• Both businesses are growing at the same, strong rate, with all revenue growth coming from depth products.
• Domain has a much more diversified revenue stream, at the expense of profitability.
• Domain is generating 1/4 the listing revenue of REA Group, and is not having a competitive impact.
• Adjacency revenues are small, and in Domain's case, quite expensive.

Australia is home to two leading real estate portals, REA Group and Domain Group. Last month, both businesses released their half-year results.

REA is the clear market leader and one of the biggest and most profitable portals in the world (read more in my Global Real Estate Portal Report). Domain was recently spun-out from Fairfax Media and listed on the Australian stock exchange, and is now able to invest and focus on its core mission.

Growth from depth products

Both REA Group and Domain are growing strong. Their latest financial results show impressive revenue growth in their core residential listing business lines (and for REA, I'm only looking at its Australian business).

Proportionally, both businesses are growing at nearly the same rate (around 19%). This is especially impressive for REA, which is already operating on a large revenue base.

For both businesses, nearly all of this impressive revenue growth is coming from depth products. These are the incremental fees paid by vendors and agents to promote a property listing on the site. $50 million is a big number!

Over time, these depth products are accounting for an increasing percentage of overall revenue (the remainder being subscription fees).

REA is generating about 4x the revenues as Domain in the core residential real estate listing business. I've included Rightmove and Zoopla from the U.K. as an additional data point.

This number isn't changing over time. Both businesses are keeping pace with each other, almost down the the decimal point. In other words, Domain as a strong #2 in the market is not having an adverse impact on REA's ability to grow.

Revenue diversification and profitability

REA Group generates the vast majority of its total revenue from listing fees (depth and subscription), around 84%. Domain, on the other hand, generates only 47% of total revenues from listing fees.

This trend is identical to the U.K. market, where Rightmove, the #1 portal, generates 76% of its revenue from listing fees, compared to 25% for Zoopla, the #2 portal. The #2 players have diversified their revenues in an effort to grow through other avenues.

The market leaders have high profit margins (EBITDA) from the profitable listing business, while the #2 players have lower profit margins from their diversified revenue streams (which tend to be lower margin).

REA's profit margin continues to improve, while Domain's is going down as the business invests in new growth areas. The market leaders are able to continue monetizing their audience without needing to diversify. 

Adjacent services

In Australia, both REA Group and Domain have launched adjacent businesses in financial and transaction services. For REA, this represents a small, but profitable, percentage of total revenue.

Domain, on the other hand, is investing heavily in its transaction services business (which includes utility switching, loan, and insurance products -- and the last two are just getting off the ground). It's generating revenue, but is not yet profitable. In other words, it's spending $12.8 million to generate $11.1 million in revenue -- expensive!

While many in the industry talk up the opportunity in adjacency revenues, the evidence suggests a much smaller (and less profitable) opportunity -- and one that is quite expensive to get off the ground.

Strategic implications for Domain

Domain is clearly operating from Zoopla's playbook: to grow, it must diversify. However, their strategies differ. In the U.K., Zoopla fully owns all of its adjacent businessess. However, Domain prefers joint ventures, owning 50% of its comparison business, 60% of its loan business, and 70% of its insurance business.

Domain is effectively starting its loan and insurance businesses from scratch, while Zoopla acquired existing businesses. Starting from scratch is expensive and will take years of investment.

The scope of the adjacency plays also varies. Zoopla generates and monetizes leads through a comparison portal, while Domain is playing a greater role in the transaction. This is a more expensive, more uncertain, but potentially more lucrative opportunity. The key word is potentially.

Domain's foray in adjacencies should not be viewed as a sure thing. While the intent mirrors Zoopla's strategy in the U.K., the execution is materially different, with the result being far from certain.

Is Realtor.com in it to win it?

On March 7th, this report on Realtor.com owner News Corp piqued my interest. Chief Executive Robert Thomson, referring to Realtor.com, said, "Obviously we’re in a competition, long term, to be number one..."

He went on to say, “...I think it’s fair to say that we turned what was the number three company into a very strong number 2 and, depending on the quarter, depending on the metric, in some quarters the fastest growing."

Here's the thing: I don't think Realtor.com is really competing to be number one.

Growth metrics

If we look at the most important metrics, I don't see evidence that Reator.com is the "fastest growing" in any category. These self-reported traffic metrics are essentially static: Zillow has around 3x the traffic of Realtor.com.

Zillow is growing its revenue (from a larger base) considerably faster than Realtor.com.

On a quarterly basis, Zillow blows away Realtor.com in terms of year-on-year revenue growth (again, from a much higher base).

The last chart does show an interesting trend, which is slowing revenue growth at Zillow compared to rising growth at Realtor.com. But in absolute terms, during the last quarter Zillow increased its revenue by $54 million while Realtor.com increased by $17 million -- a big difference!

There's still a lot of distance between the two, but it's true that Realtor.com is trending upwards while Zillow's revenue growth is slowing.

I'm not sure I'd agree that Realtor.com is the "fastest growing" in any meaningful metric, but the last three quarters show the start of a promising trend for the business.

Is Zillow concerned?

If Zillow were genuinely concerned with Realtor.com's growing momentum, I'd expect its sales and marketing expense to increase. If Realtor.com's market share were growing, Zillow would be spending more advertising money in response.

Aside from a slight bump a few quarters ago, Zillow's sales and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue is relatively flat and trending downwards.

Serious competition for top spot?

You can't argue with the fact that Realtor.com would like to be the #1 portal in the U.S. market. But are they really in a serious competition to be #1?

News Corp has been a major investor in REA Group, the leading portal in Australia, for almost two decades. More than most, it understands the power of network effects and how expensive and futile it can be to unseat a #1 player.

So is News Corp realistically expecting to overtake Zillow in the U.S.? I doubt it. I believe it's happy to run slipstream to Zillow and operate a strong, profitable business in its own right, but remain the #2 player. Attempting to overtake Zillow would be incredibly expensive and uncertain, and the resulting marketing war would drain all profits from both companies.

News Corp would never admit this strategy (who would admit they're happy to be the runner-up?). Being the underdog and striving to overtake the market leader is a great story and good for morale, but it will probably remain just that: a story.