Introduction

The Zillow pitch deck was created for CMC's Student Investment Fund (SIF) as a TMT sector investment. Zillow is the leading U.S. online real estate marketplace, monetizing housing transactions through agent referral fees, mortgage origination, and ancillary services across the home buying and selling lifecycle.

Our investment thesis centers on a structural monetization inflection driven by Zillow’s transition from its failed asset-heavy Zillow Offers model to the asset-light Flex model. While investors continue to anchor on historical missteps, the market has materially underpriced Zillow’s ability to expand For Sale Revenue / Total Transaction Value (Rev/TTV) through cross-selling and pricing power. Flex fundamentally realigns incentives by taking fees at transaction close rather than upfront, enabling Zillow to capture a larger share of housing economics without increasing customer acquisition risk.

To project revenue growth, we modeled U.S. housing transaction volumes using Fannie Mae turnover forecasts and historical home price growth, then layered in Rev/TTV expansion driven by two explicit levers: increased attach rates of Zillow Home Loans, title, and touring products, and incremental Flex pricing increases in high-TAM markets. Management has guided to an intermediate Rev/TTV target of 16 bps, yet Street estimates imply less than 1 bp of cumulative expansion through 2027. Our model assumes partial execution of management guidance, resulting in meaningful upside even under conservative housing recovery assumptions, with valuation rerating driven by improved visibility, margin expansion, and clearer KPI disclosure centered on Rev/TTV.