Zillow Acquires Showingtime

Zillow announced on 10 February 2021 that it has signed a definitive purchase agreement to acquire ShowingTime Inc. for $500 million. 

With the acquisition, Zillow is all set to take advantage of ShowingTime’s technology to make it easier for Zillow customers to request tours via their platform. Post the acquisition, ShowingTime will not cease its operations as a standalone network and maintain its existing data policies.

ShowingTime is an online home-tour scheduler that streamlines and improves the house touring experience. This Chicago-based tech company led by its president Mike Lane has a network across the whole of North America of approximately 1 million agents and has connections with thousands of multiple listing services (MLSs).

ShowingTime synchronizes the backstage schedules so that agents can book a confirmed online home showing tour without managing a complex operation and concentrate on their customers. This residential real estate industry’s prominent provider showing technology for market stats and management has above 1.2 million active subscribers for its services. The organization facilitated more than 50 million industry-wide showings in 2020.

Zillow is a leading real estate and rental marketplace headquartered in Seattle offering its clients an on-demand experience for selling, purchasing, renting, or financing, with complete transparency and end-to-end support. Zillow Group is listed on NASDAQ: Z and has been gradually advancing its focus towards home tours and other related technologies.

Zillow disclosed the news of acquiring ShowingTime while posting its results for the fourth quarter. The company reported high-performance earnings with a net income of $46 million on revenue of $789 million in the fourth quarter. ShowingTime is Zillow's second-largest price-measured acquisition to date, behind its huge Trulia purchase of $2.5 billion in 2015. It's the 17th acquisition of the company to date. Zillow also stated that its website and mobile app traffic hit a Q4 high of 201 million unique monthly on an average, a rise of 16 percent year on year, generating no less than about 2.2 billion visits during the quarter, which is more than 27% YOY.

As home shoppers, sellers, agents, and industry partners step towards a more successful digital future, the acquisition by Zillow would accelerate its adoption of ShowingTime's technology. Zillow hopes to increase house tour volumes and transactions for the real estate industry partners with this acquisition. Zillow will continue to invest in ShowingTime and use its technology to boost the Zillow Offers product that purchases and sells homes in hundreds of markets nationwide.