Inman

Zillow will buy and sell homes in LA, Austin, San Diego and more

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Real estate tech giant Zillow announced on Thursday it’s expanding its direct-to-consumer online homebuying and selling platform known as Zillow Offers to Austin, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa within the next year.

By the end of the first quarter of 2020, Zillow Offers will be live in 20 markets across the country.

Zillow Offers was launched in Phoenix in April 2018 and has since gone live in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Denver, Charlotte, Raleigh, Houston, Riverside and Dallas. The company has previously announced plans to launch in Miami, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Nashville, Orlando and Portland, Oregon.

“More than 100,000 sellers have requested a Zillow Offer since we launched last year, and we’re excited to announce we’ll be serving 20 markets just two years after buying our first home,” said Zillow Brand President Jeremy Wacksman in a statement. “It’s clear people want a simpler, easier and less stressful way to buy and sell homes.”

“To meet the needs of today’s on-demand consumers, Zillow is rewiring real estate to create a seamless and integrated transaction experience,” Wacksman added. “We’re rapidly innovating on a number of services that span the entire transaction, including Zillow Offers, mortgages through our affiliate lender Zillow Home Loans, and the ability to tour and unlock Zillow-owned homes on any schedule.”

Since launching the platform, Zillow Offers has reached a place where it receives a request for an offer every two minutes. In the first quarter of 2019, the company reported $128.5 million in revenue under the Zillow Homes segment of the business, under which Zillow Offers operates.

Zillow will work with local brokerages to represent it on both sides of the transaction, and provide seller leads to local Premier Agent customers when a seller opts not to accept Zillow’s offer.

Zillow will enter a crowded iBuyer space in some of those markets. In Los Angeles, for example, the biggest market for Zillow Offers yet, Opendoor and Redfin already have an iBuyer presence.

Opendoor also already has a presence in Austin, Sacramento, San Antonio and Tampa. Redfin’s iBuyer platform is live in San Diego. Offerpad, a one-time partner of Zillow’s before the latter launched their own iBuyer, will overlap with Zillow in Austin, Tampa and San Antonio.

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