I’m enormously proud of the work the Zillow Group team did last year. Most notably, we took on the enormous task of integrating together the two leading companies in online real estate, and completed it in mere months.
But I get even more excited when I talk about the future, and my annual letter to shareholders is a great opportunity for me to lay out my vision and priorities. The opportunity ahead is enormous, and I’m happy to share a glimpse into why we’re so motivated to keep climbing the mountain ahead.
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Zillow Group Shareholder Letter 2016
1. April 25, 2016
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
These annual shareholder letters provide me with a good opportunity to step back and take stock of key
milestones from the past year. But more importantly, they give me a chance to look ahead and share with you my
vision of where our company is headed.
* * *
Let’s start with a look back:
2015 was a year of extraordinary growth across all metrics – peak monthly unique users grew from nearly 89
millioni in 2014 to more than 148 millionii in 2015; Premier Agent revenue grew from more than $224 million in
2014 to more than $466 million in 2015; total revenue grew from nearly $326 million in 2014 to nearly $645
million in 2015. And 2015 was a truly amazing year beyond the financial results. We completed the acquisition
of two meaningful companies that expanded our capabilities and reach, we accomplished major feats of
integration quickly, and we launched new products across marketplaces that were very well received.
Additionally, all of Zillow Group’s consumer brands have gracefully navigated the massive platform shift from
desktop Web to mobile Web and mobile apps. The consumer migration to mobile devices plays to our strengths,
as our product differentiation and technical superiority in our category are even more significant on mobile than
desktop. In 2012, about half of our brands’ usage was on mobile; today about two-thirds of our usage is mobile
and growing rapidlyiii.
In 2015, we focused on turning “Zillow” into “Zillow Group” and integrating certain parts of Trulia and Zillow
together. As the results show, we achieved our desired level of integration in record time – months rather than
years – and are now benefiting from the formation of Zillow Group and the combination of our companies.
Specifically, we have integrated all industry-facing aspects of our business. For example, Zillow Group salespeople
sell integrated advertising products to real estate agents, mortgage professionals, rental professionals, homebuilders
and display advertisers. Those ads are displayed simultaneously on Zillow, Trulia, our other owned and operated
brands, and the partners’ sites which we power. Our integrated Zillow Group industry relations team works with
Multiple Listings Services, brokerages, homebuilders and rental professionals on behalf of all of our brands.
While we have integrated all “business-to-business” aspects of our company – anything facing the real estate
industry – we have intentionally kept separate our brand-specific product teams that build consumer-facing
products. As a result, we have separate teams of software engineers, designers, program managers, testers and
other technologists developing consumer-facing innovations at each of our brands – Zillow in Seattle, Trulia and
HotPads in San Francisco, and StreetEasy and Naked Apartments in New York. This lets us innovate faster and
keeps Zillow Group brands leading the industry. Each of our consumer brands is doing well in its own right:
Zillow traffic is at record levels and continues to grow quickly, adding nearly 17 millioniv new unique users in
our peak month in 2015 compared to our peak month in 2014. Trulia’s mobile and desktop usage metrics are now
growing faster than at any time in the past year, and leads to Premier Agents are at record levels. HotPads’ traffic
growth is astounding, growing approximately 60% year-over-year in December 2015 and topping 5 million
unique users in the peak month in 2015v. StreetEasy traffic is now approximately double what it was when we
acquired it about 2.5 years agovi. And our newest brand, Naked Apartments, is growing rapidly as well.
Our acquisitions and divestitures in 2015 and 2016 illuminate our strategy. We have now acquired 11 companies
and sold two. We acquired Trulia because we believe that audience scale (especially with multiple brands) is critical
2. for category leadership. We sold ActiveRain, a real estate social network we inherited in the Trulia acquisition,
because it didn’t fit into our mission. We sold Market Leader (which we also inherited from the Trulia acquisition),
an enterprise CRM tool for real estate brokerages, because offering our own free agent and agent team-oriented
Premier Agent app is our preferred software tools strategy. We acquired Dotloop because its transaction
management software makes selling real estate more efficient for consumers, brokers and agents. Not only do
efficient agents make better advertisers, but Dotloop has the potential to radically improve the entire real estate
transaction process. We acquired Naked Apartments because adding the largest rentals-only platform in New York
to our brand portfolio helps us achieve our mission. Overall, our M&A track record is excellent, and our decisions
have been closely interwoven with our strategy.
The size of our team also grew mightily in 2015 – from about 1,200 employees at the end of 2014 to more than 2,200
employees at the end of 2015. During 2015, we had more than 90,000 applicants apply to work at Zillow Group, and
we hired just 1% of those applicants. The quality of our people and the strength of our company’s culture continue to
be our two most important competitive advantages. Our company is mission-driven – “Build the largest, most trusted
and vibrant home-related marketplace in the world” – and we act according to six “core values”:
• Own It
• Act With Integrity
• Move Fast, Think Big
• ZG is a Team Sport
• Turn On The Lights
• Winning is Fun
Our core values are critical to maintaining our extraordinary company culture which attracts, retains and
motivates incredible people to do their best work.
I am proud of many things about Zillow Group – our extraordinary people and company culture; our strong
consumer brands; our partnerships with the real estate industry; and much more. But one of our most
distinguishing features as a company is our ability to rapidly iterate on business models. When most other
category leaders find a winning business model, they do everything in their power to protect their cash cow.
Zillow Group does quite the opposite – we are constantly looking for ways to deconstruct our business models
and rebuild them bigger and better. Examples from 2015 include: integrating Zillow’s and Trulia’s Premier
Agent businesses; changing our mortgages business model for the third time in its history; and creating several
new revenue streams at StreetEasy and in our rentals marketplace. The internet sector is littered with companies
whose success bred inertia, complacency and an inability to innovate. This will not be our fate. We do not rest on
our laurels. Victory laps are rare and brief here, and then it is on to the next mountain to climb.
***
At a high level, the plan for 2016 is to build upon the foundation laid in 2015: grow audience with multiple
brands, connect that audience to professionals, and provide professionals with software to make the most of those
connections. Last year we were integrating. This year we are innovating.
Our Premier Agent business is our largest marketplace by far, and we are innovating there more than ever before.
Our emerging marketplaces – including rentals, mortgages and New York – are growing revenue even faster than
Premier Agent, albeit off of smaller bases. Each of our emerging marketplaces have enormous total addressable
markets in the billions of dollars, and we are going after each of them with vigor.
The opportunity in the residential real estate category alone remains massive: $1.6 trillionvii in transaction volume,
leading to $80 billionviii in commissions, and nearly $11 billionix in advertising. In 2015, we believe Zillow Group
enabled approximately 3.9%x of transaction sides, which drove roughly $3.2 billionxi in commissions for our
Premier Agent advertisers. This compares to an estimated 3.1%xii of transactions and $2.3 billionxiii in commissions
3. in 2014. We will grow the number of transactions we facilitate by increasing lead volumes to agents and brokers
who convert leads effectively and by providing them with tools and training to improve their lead conversion. To do
this, we will continue to focus on increasing the number of high producing Premier Agent advertisers on our
platform.
In the next few years, we believe that the emergence of high performing agent advertisers should occur even
faster as consumers increasingly use the internet to select their advisors in the real estate transaction. We will
remain as innovative as ever, developing new consumer services, new ways for real estate professionals to
market themselves, and new software innovations to help real estate professionals be even more successful. And
along the way, we will live by our core values, which have made this company exceptional.
Thank you very much for entrusting us as stewards of your capital. We appreciate your partnership.
Sincerely,
Spencer Rascoff, CEO
Email: spencer@zillow.com
Twitter: @SpencerRascoff
i Internal tracking via Google Analytics.
ii Internal tracking via Google Analytics and Omniture.
iii Internal tracking via Google Analytics.
iv Id.
v Id.
vi Id.
vii 2016 U.S. Census Bureau, 2015 National Association of REALTORS®, Internal calculations.
viii 2016 U.S. Census Bureau, 2015 National Association of REALTORS®, New York Times October 25, 2014
article entitled, “An Extra Cost in American Home Sales”, Internal calculations.
ix Census Bureau, 2015 National Association of REALTORS®, Internal calculations, Borrell Associates 2015
Real Estate Outlook.
x 2016 U.S. Census Bureau, 2015 National Association of REALTORS®, New York Times October 25, 2014
article entitled, “An Extra Cost in American Home Sales”, Internal calculations.
xi Id.
xii Id.
xiii Id.