Zillow hits a high on the scrollable House Hype, but can it become the Amazon of homes?

Lusting after the oceanside Colonial... Zillow's last quarterly earnings were as steamy as the Zillow SNL skit. Zillow is the real estate marketplace that helps you buy, sell, or rent homes. As homebound Millennials spent late nights in bed scrolling through condo listings:

• Record traffic: Zillow’s websites and apps racked up 2.2B visits last quarter, up 27% from the previous year.
• Sweet sales: Zillow mainly makes $$$ by charging property management companies to advertise listings and selling "Premier Agent" services, like customer leads. In 2020, it made $3.3B in sales, up 22% from 2019.
• Record stock price: Zillow stock soared to a record last week after it dropped the numbers. Shares have nearly 4X'd over the past year.

Thank the House Hype... The Fed has given us near-zero interest rates to stimulate the economy. That led to mortgage rates notching more than a dozen record lows in 2020. Thanks to cheap loans WFH, home demand has skyrocketed. While marketing is still Zillow's main money maker, the home selling/buying segment is catching up:

• Zillow uses its massive database on homes for iBuying — aka: making nearly instant cash offers on homes based on "Zestimates" (and cutting out the agent middleman). It charges sellers commission-like fees, and also profits on flipping homes it owns.
• Competitors Opendoor and Redfin started iBuying before Zillow, and their stocks are also at record highs. Unlike Zillow with its ad biz, they mainly make money on listing and commission fees.
• BTW: iBuyers accounted for just 0.2% of all US home purchases in the third quarter of 2020 — but there's room to grow as technology continues to disrupt traditional real estate.