Zillow Has Gone Wild--for AI

As the housing market stalls, Zillow's CEO sees AI as "an ingredient rather than a threat" that can both help the company protect its turf and reinvent how people search for homes. This will not be a banner year for the real estate app Zillow. "We describe the home market as bouncing along the bottom," CEO Jeremy Wacksman said in our conversation this week. Last year was dismal for the real estate market, and he expects things to improve only marginally in 2026. "The way to think about it is that there were 4.1 million existing homes sold last year--a normal market is 5.5 to 6 million," Wacksman says.