Zillow launched a personalized hub that guides home buyers through every step of their purchase. Three new features have also been designed to give buyers and sellers more clarity at every stage of the transaction, according to a release.
The median home search for a buyer takes from three to four months, involves countless conversations with an agent and lender, and culminates in gathering documents at a few days’ notice, all while tracking a budget on a spreadsheet.
It’s a process that moves more than half of buyers to tears, according to Zillow research. And today’s market conditions aren’t making it any easier. Buyers, nearly half of whom are first timers, are navigating a market where the housing recovery is “back on pause,” with mortgage rates climbing past 6.5 percent, adding more uncertainty to an already complex process.
Now, Zillow is giving buyers a clearer path forward: a single place where everything comes together. The new personalized hub guides buyers through four milestones: setting a budget, finding a home, making an offer and closing the deal. It brings together goals, finances, tasks, documents, and the agent and lender a buyer is working with, all in one place. And all of those details update automatically as the journey evolves, so buyers always know where they stand and what to do next.
“Zillow has spent 20 years turning on the lights in real estate, giving buyers and sellers access to information they’d never had before,” Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman said in the release. “The next frontier is the journey itself: the financing, the coordination, the offer, the closing. For the first time, every home shopper on Zillow has a single place that brings it all together, so instead of wondering what comes next, they always know exactly where they are and what to do."
Additionally, Zillow states that home shoppers start by answering a single question: “Are you buying, selling, both, or just browsing?” From there, they receive a personalized plan.
The hub immediately displays:
- BuyAbility: This personalized, real-time affordability tool helps buyers understand the range of home prices and monthly payments that may fit their financial situation. They can then use that guidance to shop for homes that are realistically within reach. That information is updated with live mortgage rates.
- Local market insights: This includes market conditions, median days to pending, active listings and a one-year price forecast.
- The shopper's team: If a buyer is already working with an agent and loan officer, those contacts are given in this view. If the buyer doesn't have a team, the hub brings Agent Finder to connect them with an agent in their area.
From there, Zillow says buyers are guided through four milestones: setting a budget, finding a home, making an offer and closing the deal. The hub shows buyers which areas to focus on and lists the steps to follow below each milestone. Progress is updated automatically when a buyer gets pre-approved, the hub moves forward; when they go under contract, closing tasks appear.
Three additional Summer Launch features give buyers and sellers the tools to plan their move, while the Summer Launch goes beyond offering the personalized moving hub with the addition of three new features designed to help buyers and sellers move forward during those moments that matter most.
“Every feature in our Summer Launch was designed around a specific moment when buyers lose clarity or momentum,” Zillow Chief Product Officer Christopher Roberts said. “The hub gives buyers confidence by making a complex process easier. The shared collection feature helps partners collaborate on their home search, and the ability to shop with Verified Pre-approval shows buyers what they can actually afford on every listing, not just the list price. Zillow Preview opens the pre-market to every buyer, not just those in a certain network. Together, these features remove the friction that makes the home-buying process so hard.”