People will let AI agents cancel subscriptions and book appointments, but most won’t want one to do their house hunting, predicts Zillow Group CEO Jeremy Wacksman.
Wacksman made the case Wednesday afternoon in prepared remarks on Zillow’s quarterly earnings call, addressing a big issue for the online real estate company: whether AI agents will shop on people’s behalf, bypassing sites such as Zillow.
“No one wants an AI agent to watch a movie or play a game for them, because the enjoyment is the point,” he said. “Dreaming and searching for a home is similar. It’s the fun part of the moving process that people want to do.”
Few decisions are as high-stakes as choosing a home, he said. “Finding a home isn’t a chore to hand off to a robot; it’s a milestone people want to live themselves.”
It’s a key issue for Zillow, which makes most of its money from the home-buying process, including fees from partner real estate agents and its mortgage lending business.
That depends on people browsing Zillow’s listings and connecting with those (human) agents and loan officers. An AI agent that does the searching could change those dynamics and potentially cut Zillow out of the process.
The issue has become more pressing with the rise of personal AI agents such as Meta’s Muse, which launched in September and can book travel and make purchases on people’s behalf, among other everyday tasks.
Amazon blocked Muse from shopping on its site less than two weeks after launch, saying it never agreed to let Muse shop there and that the agent doesn’t identify itself. Amazon is also suing Perplexity over the shopping agent in its Comet browser. A federal appeals court in August overturned an injunction Amazon had won in that case.
So far, Wacksman said, Zillow isn’t seeing meaningful traffic from AI platforms. The company has integrated with OpenAI and Google’s Gemini, and is now working with Anthropic. About 80% of its traffic comes directly to Zillow.
Other tech notes from the call:
- Zillow’s AI mode, a conversational search feature, is now available to all signed-in users. More than 2.5 million people used it from March to September, asking 8.5 million questions, the company says.
- Zillow’s Follow Up Boss software for real estate agents is getting AI that spots leads needing attention and recommends next steps, which agents can approve.
- Engineers at the company are using AI to ship 60% more changes to production than in 2024, Wacksman said.
For the third quarter, Zillow’s revenue rose 7% to $724 million, short of its own forecast of $745 million to $760 million, as a sharp rise in mortgage rates slowed home sales.
The company posted a $158 million net loss for the quarter, mostly from agreeing to settle a shareholder lawsuit over Zillow Offers, its defunct home-flipping business.
https://ift.tt/4iSVkCE November 5, 2026 at 01:41AM GeekWire
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