Real estate industry icon Glenn Kelman has found his next home — professionally, anyway.

The longtime Redfin CEO, who stepped down in January, six months after Rocket Companies acquired the Seattle brokerage for $1.75 billion, has joined venture firm Greylock as an executive in residence.

In the new role, announced by the Silicon Valley firm on Tuesday, Kelman will work directly with founders on leadership development, company building, go-to-market strategy, and what Greylock calls “the hard parts of scaling that don’t fit neatly into a board deck.” 

When he announced his departure from Redfin in January, Kelman said he wanted to find “another mission-driven enterprise outside of real estate.”

Reached by email Wednesday, Kelman confirmed that’s still the plan.

“I’m still looking to start some kind of new mission-driven enterprise, which involves being in the wilderness a bit and exploring ideas that are never going to work and howling at the moon,” he wrote. “Occasionally, I just end up doing the kids’ laundry in the middle of the day too.”

The Greylock role, he said, will aid his creative process by exposing him to the range of big ideas the firm has backed.

But he doesn’t intend to become an investor himself. Kelman noted that he bet longtime Seattle investor Greg Gottesman back in 2005 that he’d never become a VC — a bet he says he still hasn’t lost.

He described the role as “mostly just advising other founders, which I don’t think is incompatible with starting my own thing. You learn a lot from other people.”

Kelman said he’s staying in Seattle (“probably for the rest of my life”), citing “the people, trees, mountains, lakes and islands here.”

Greylock, he added, “gives me more exposure to what’s happening in Silicon Valley and beyond, which I really like.” The firm, founded in 1965, is among the oldest venture firms in the U.S., known for its early bets on companies such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Airbnb and Workday.

Kelman’s ties to the firm run deep. Greylock partner James Slavet was an early Redfin investor and board member, and the firm credits him with playing “a formative role in Glenn’s development as a leader,” according to the announcement of his new role.

A veteran tech founder, Kelman joined Redfin in 2005, a year after it launched, and spent two decades building the Seattle company into one of the best-known names in U.S. real estate. Redfin went public in 2017 at a valuation of roughly $1.73 billion.

Along the way, Kelman became one of the industry’s most candid voices: testifying before Congress on commission reform, pulling Redfin out of the National Association of Realtors in 2023, and turning routine earnings calls into must-read theater with his off-the-cuff analogies. 

Redfin, meanwhile, is pressing ahead under Rocket. The brand kept its name and Seattle headquarters as a Rocket subsidiary. Rocket CEO Varun Krishna has been running Redfin since Kelman’s exit. 

Is video-game industry leader Gabe Newell getting ready to vacate the Seattle area for sunny South Florida like some of his billionaire contemporaries? Reports of a luxury property purchase raise the question.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Newell, CEO and co-founder of Valve Corp., is the buyer of a $70.8 million waterfront estate in Manalapan, Fla., north of Miami. The newspaper this week cited people familiar with the transaction.

Sellers Cindy and Ron McMackin paid roughly $39 million for the 2.06-acre property in 2020, and listed it for $85 million in December, according to the WSJ. The couple, founders of the mechanical subcontracting company Pan-Pacific Mechanical, declined to comment on the buyer’s identity.

The estate is featured in a 2020 YouTube video from Premier Estate Properties, above, and among its features is a tunnel that connects the house with the ocean. It has a roughly 20,000-square-foot residence, an outdoor pool, a dock and a boat lift, the WSJ reported.

Newell, 63, has led Bellevue, Wash.-based Valve since co-founding the video game company in 1996 alongside former Microsoft colleague Mike Harrington. Newell spent 13 years at Microsoft and is credited with helping to build the first three versions of Windows before he left.

Valve is known for creating the PC gaming platform Steam, and its game franchises include “Half-Life” and “Portal,” among others.

With a net worth of $11 billion, Newell is No. 293 on Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world.

A move to Miami would put Newell in the same company as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who announced his move from Seattle in an Instagram message in November 2023. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz also recently announced on LinkedIn a Miami move, and then last month wrote a critical op-ed in The Wall Street Journal blasting Seattle’s anti-business climate and Mayor Katie Wilson.

Seattle entrepreneur Rich Barton, co-founder of Zillow Group and Expedia Group, cited personal reasons for his recent move to Las Vegas.

All of those relocations come amid an increasingly heated debate over taxes in Washington state, where lawmakers have expanded taxes on wealthy residents while some business leaders warn that the policies could drive entrepreneurs elsewhere.

Even though Newell’s move out of the region isn’t confirmed, Bellevue commercial real estate developer Kevin Wallace was already lamenting the loss of another Washington billionaire. In a post on LinkedIn, Wallace shared a chart tracking the state’s billionaire “flight log” — listing the state’s richest people and whether they are still residents.

“Assuming Newell changes his domicile, that’s $15,000,000,000 in wealth headed for states with no income, capital gains or estate taxes, and it’s only been 96 days since the income tax bill passed,” Wallace wrote. “This is going to leave a mark.”

What’s it take to be a neighbor with a sunny disposition? Perhaps more sunlight, for starters.

Seattle-based real estate brokerage Redfin launched “Sunscore” on Monday, a new interactive feature that lets home searchers see how much natural light a property receives throughout the day.

The 3D map offers a property-level sun-path visualization, tracking sunlight and the shadows cast by surrounding terrain, buildings and trees. Different times of day and times of the year are analyzed to provide a full picture of potential shadows. Properties are scored 0-100 — the more sunlight, the higher the score.

“We know from customer feedback that sunlight is a priority for house hunters,” said Ariel Dos Santos, Redfin’s chief product and design officer, in a news release. “When you tour a home, you want to see brightly lit spaces with natural light pouring through windows. Sunscore gives home searchers that information upfront in a simple-to-understand way.”

A recent Redfin survey found that nearly 70% of people say the amount of sunlight in their home affects their satisfaction with their living situation, and 11% say it’s non-negotiable when searching for a home.

And the amount of light a home receives isn’t just a mood-booster or an aesthetic factor; the score on property-level sunlight can be also help homeowners measure the potential for solar energy and long-term cost savings.

Sunscore is developed by Austria-based Shadowmap, and the partnership with Redfin-owned Rocket is a U.S. exclusive. The feature is now available on all for-sale homes listed on Redfin.com and will be available on Redfin’s iPhone and Android apps later this year.

Zillow Group says its engineers are shipping 40% more code each, on average, thanks to internal use of AI tools, allowing them to move features faster from concept to launch.

That’s one of the AI claims the company made in its first-quarter shareholder letter Wednesday, which read at times less like a financial recap and more like a tech strategy blueprint.

“We’re embedding AI throughout the real estate experience in ways that make Zillow increasingly indispensable, and we’re innovating with speed and intention,” CEO Jeremy Wacksman said in the letter, as the Seattle-based company reported revenue up 18% to $708 million in a housing market that was essentially flat. 

Other examples of AI implementation from the letter include:

• Consumer AI search: Zillow has begun rolling out an AI-powered search mode to about 5% of its audience, or millions of users. The company said early signals show deeper conversations and more actionable engagement compared to traditional search.
• Agent tools: Follow Up Boss, Zillow’s CRM tool for real estate teams, is becoming an “AI-powered workflow engine” for coordination, prioritization, and outreach. Monthly active users are up more than 70% since Zillow acquired the product at the end of 2023. 
• Rental leasing: AI Assist, a leasing assistant embedded in multifamily listings, handles lead management, applicant screening, and lease coordination for property managers.

Wacksman also addressed competition from general-purpose AI platforms, saying Zillow’s proprietary data, deep consumer engagement, and end-to-end transaction tools give it advantages that are difficult to replicate. Zillow launched a partnership with ChatGPT last October, feeding its listings, photos, and pricing into OpenAI’s platform and funneling users back to Zillow for tours and financing. 

In addition to its flagship Zillow homes portal, Zillow Group includes real estate brands such as Trulia, StreetEasy, HotPads, Follow Up Boss, ShowingTime, dotloop, and Zillow Home Loans.

The company has cut jobs twice in the past 18 months, including about 200 positions in January, which it attributed to performance rather than AI-driven reductions.

Financial highlights: 

• Net income rose to $46 million from $8 million a year ago. 
• Purchase loan origination volume through Zillow Home Loans nearly doubled, rising 96% to $1.5 billion, making it a top-25 purchase lender nationally. 
• Rentals revenue jumped 42% to $183 million, driven by 57% growth in multifamily revenue. 
• The company repurchased 13.5 million shares for $626 million during the quarter, consuming nearly half its cash reserves.

Competitive moves: The day before earnings, Zillow announced a partnership with Realtor.com to extend its Zillow Preview pre-market listings across both platforms. Zillow Preview, launched seven weeks ago, now has more than 60 brokerage partners. 

The move is part of a broader industry fight over listing transparency that put Zillow at odds with Compass, which sued over Zillow’s ban on private listings before settling in March.

Litigation costs: The company flagged $11 million in incremental legal expenses in Q1, expected to rise to about $20 million in Q2 as the FTC trial over Zillow’s rental syndication agreement with Redfin approaches. A CoStar copyright case also remain active.

Market reaction: Zillow shares dropped about 6% in after-hours trading, driven less by the Q1 results (which beat analyst estimates) than by Q2 revenue guidance of $750 million to $765 million, with the midpoint slightly below Wall Street expectations. 

The company is projecting revenue growth in the mid teens for the full year and planning for the housing market to remain at the bottom of the cycle.

Correction: References to the status of the Compass lawsuit were corrected after publication.

Seattle has officially leveled up from a “secondary” tech market to a critical “reinforcer” of the global innovation economy — but the city is running out of room to grow, according to a new report.

The latest edition of commercial real estate firm JLL’s Innovation Geographies report reveals that while Seattle is outpacing traditional hubs like New York and London in talent migration, a shortage of “investment-grade” real estate is creating a bottleneck for the city’s next era of tech expansion.

Seattle lands among 18 so-called reinforcer markets, where it is classified in the report as a “tech powerhouse” alongside cities like Austin, Berlin, and Tel Aviv. Reinforcers also include Los Angeles, Shanghai, Toronto, Washington, D.C., Raleigh, N.C., and others.

While diverse in what makes them attractive, the cities share the common characteristics of much higher rates of net migration, JLL says, having seen population inflows that are 3.8 times higher than the San Francisco Bay Area — the lone “core” city — and eight other “anchor” cities.

The 135 cities ranked in the report are scored based on an analysis of talent concentration and innovation output. While talent concentration measures the human capital and educational pipeline, the output score focuses on the tangible results and financial activity of a city’s innovation ecosystem, such as VC funding, startup activity, R&D spending, and more.

Seattle ranks 12th in innovation output and 23rd in talent concentration. The Bay Area is No. 1 in both categories.

But high-tier hubs are facing a global undersupply of premium, investment-grade real estate that is attractive to innovative companies, according to JLL, which says that only 11% of global office space was built after 2020.

Meanwhile, reinforcer markets like Seattle have seen surging prime rents, averaging $837 per square meter. And while some markets have seen an occupancy recovery, Seattle and others are still below pre-pandemic occupancy highs.

Commercial real estate firm CBRE reported earlier this year that Seattle’s office vacancy reached another record high at 34.7% in Q4. The numbers underscore how hybrid work and shrinking office footprints continue to weigh on a tech-heavy market like Seattle.

In nearby downtown Bellevue, vacancy rates still remain high, reaching 25.4% at the end of last year, according to Broderick Group. But OpenAI signed a big new lease in February, reflecting a growing role for the Eastside in the AI boom.

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

One of the biggest lawsuits to capture the real estate industry’s attention over the past year has come to an abrupt end.

Compass International Holdings announced Wednesday that it is dismissing the lawsuit it filed last June against Zillow. The two industry titans have battled in court for months over Zillow’s Listing Access Standards, a policy barring listings that are publicly marketed but not widely available via the MLS.

Zillow shares rose slightly after the news broke.

Compass’ signature 3-phased marketing strategy, in which sellers are encouraged to launch their home as a Compass Private Exclusive and then enter a Compass Coming Soon phase before listing publicly via the MLS, is in direct conflict with those standards.

The move comes a day after Compass Chairman and CEO Robert Reffkin appeared to extend an olive branch to the brokerage’s portal rival after Zillow introduced a change in its approach to pre-market listings.

Compass dismissed its lawsuit without prejudice, which means the company could file the case again at a later date.

What Compass said: Reffkin specifically cited Zillow’s “Preview” product announcement — which he referred to as a policy “reversal” — in a post on social media announcing the dismissal.

“Because of this reversal, we are dismissing our lawsuit against Zillow,” he wrote.

“Our goal has always been to give homeowners more choice to decide when, where, and how to market their homes. We are pleased to see that both other brokerages and portals are now recognizing the strong consumer demand for more options in how they sell their homes,” Reffkin’s post said.

“At Compass International Holdings, we will always defend our real estate professional’s ability to put their clients first, and we will continue to advocate for more choices, not fewer, for homeowners.”

What Zillow said: “Zillow welcomes Compass’ decision to voluntarily withdraw its lawsuit. As we said from the outset, the claims lacked merit, and the court’s preliminary injunction ruling reinforced that view,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“The underlying issue remains: Private listing networks are not in the best interests of consumers, and they never have been. Restricting listings to hidden networks limits transparency, disadvantages buyers and sellers and undermines fair access to real estate information which is so critical in this housing affordability crisis,” the statement continued.

The Listing Access Standards “were introduced to protect core principles of competition, openness and access that support healthy markets and benefit homebuyers, sellers and agents,” and those standards “remain in effect.”

“Zillow will continue to choose not to display listings that were previously hidden from the public for the benefit of any one company. Any suggestion that these standards are no longer being enforced is incorrect,” the company said.

“Hidden listing networks that gate access to listings behind a registration wall or require buyers to work with a specific brokerage do not meet our standards and, to the extent Compass continues operating a network of inventory hidden in the shadows, those listings remain at odds with our standards.”

How we got here: Zillow, which has repeatedly advocated for listings transparency and an open marketplace, announced its Listing Access Standards in April 2025. At the time, the home search giant said the policy was designed to “create an even playing field” as the private listings trend gained momentum across the industry.

Compass, which has built its marketing strategy around private listings and the idea of “seller choice,” sued Zillow in June — days before the policy’s enforcement began — alleging that Zillow possessed “monopoly power” and was violating antitrust laws. Compass later alleged that a conspiracy existed between Zillow and Redfin after Redfin made moves to adopt a similar ban on certain private listings. That ban never took effect, and Compass has since made a deal to display its Coming Soon listings on Redfin.com.

Zillow had recently notched a win in its court battle with Compass. Months after filing a preliminary injunction asking the court to pause Zillow’s ban while the case proceeded, a judge denied Compass’ request in a Feb. 6 ruling that allowed Zillow to continue enforcing its listing standards.

Compass said at the time that it planned to move forward with the lawsuit, declaring that the judge’s ruling was “not a loss.”

Making nice? But much has changed since early February. After the home search site unveiled Zillow Preview, Reffkin’s Mar. 17 social media response to Zillow Preview seemed to signal some kind of vibe shift between the two companies — two industry giants that have been vocal in their criticism of each other’s policies.

“A sincere thank you to Zillow for offering homeowners more choice,” he wrote in response to Zillow’s announcement. “Sellers deserve the choice to decide when, where and how they market their homes.”

Amazon plans to exit an office building near its Seattle headquarters, 12 years after taking over the space during the height of its growth in the city.

Amazon is not renewing its lease at 1915 Terry Ave. in the Denny Triangle area of downtown Seattle, the company confirmed to GeekWire on Tuesday. The tech giant, which has occupied the seven-story, 251,000-square-foot space owned by Seattle Children’s since 2014, will move out at the end of May and relocate employees to other offices.

The Puget Sound Business Journal first reported on the planned move.

Kumo, as Amazon calls it, is a 1950s-era building located just a few blocks from Amazon’s main office towers and the Spheres. Amazon did not say how many employees work from the building.

The company employs approximately 50,000 corporate and tech employees in Seattle. More than 1,400 workers in Seattle were impacted by company-wide layoffs of 16,000 people announced at the end of January.

PSBJ reported that since 2020, Amazon has given up more than 1 million square feet of office space in Seattle, most of it in the Denny Triangle.

The company has been growing its footprint across Lake Washington in Bellevue, where it has opened new office buildings and said it plans to employ 25,000 people as part of its regional HQ.

Airbnb is incentivizing people to open up their homes this summer to FIFA World Cup visitors, offering $750 to new hosts in Seattle and other cities hosting soccer matches.

The short-term rental platform says millions of fans are expected to attend the tournament across 16 cities in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, June 11 – July 19. Officials expect an estimated 750,000 people to visit Seattle during that period, and Airbnb says its hosts will welcome 23,000 guests in the city.

Airbnb says Seattle hosts could earn roughly $3,800 by renting space during the tournament. Searches for Airbnb accommodations in host cities have jumped by an average of 80% compared to the same period last year, the company said Wednesday.

A new host sign-up page provides details about how to publish a listing and terms related to reservations. Eligible zip codes in Seattle are also listed.

Airbnb is also hosting a workshop in Seattle on Thursday for interested property hosts. The afternoon event at RailSpur in Pioneer Square (419 Occidental Ave. S.) will include strategies to boost visibility and secure bookings during the FIFA World Cup; best practices in pricing, calendar management, and guest communication; tips on catering to international fans; insights from Airbnb managers; and networking with fellow Seattle hosts.

Visit Seattle projects nearly $1 billion will be generated for King County over the six matches played at Seattle’s Lumen Field between June and July. The projection includes more than $100 million in direct state and local tax revenue and the creation of more than 20,000 full-time and part-time jobs.

A bill to tax short-term rentals returned to the Washington State Legislature this session and failed to advance again. The legislation sought to allow counties, cities and towns to impose a tax of up to 4% on short-term rentals used by vacation guests on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo. The bill also failed to advance during the 2025 session.

When Jeremy Wacksman joined Zillow Group in 2009, his first job was getting the upstart real estate site onto the iPhone. Now, amid a generative AI boom, the CEO says the next platform shift is even bigger for Zillow than mobile — and so are the company’s ambitions.

“It’s going to enable all of our services to just be a lot smarter and a lot more intelligent and a lot more personalized,” Wacksman told GeekWire. “And I think it will help us solve the problem we’ve been after forever: how do we digitize the transaction, and how do we actually integrate and remove all the busy work and the redundant paperwork and the errors and the pain of the transaction?”

Zillow built its brand by letting people window‑shop for homes and by generating advertising revenue from real estate agents. More than 200 million people visit Zillow’s apps and sites on a monthly basis. But now, as Zillow marks its 20th anniversary on Monday, its leaders are pushing toward something bigger: a “remote control” that keeps buyers, agents and lenders inside Zillow for the entire home-buying experience.

It’s part of a “housing super app” strategy the company first laid out several years ago, following the failed attempt to build Zillow Offers, its “iBuying” home-flipping business. Zillow remains focused on finding ways to streamline how people buy homes beyond search and alleviate what can be a stressful process.

“More than half of buyers report that they cry during the transaction process,” Wacksman noted.

While Zillow’s traditional advertising business still makes up a majority of its revenue, it has made a bigger push into mortgages — which grew 36% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2025 — as well as rentals, which grew 41%. Zillow, which reports fourth quarter results this week, is also piloting closing services.

The shift marks a deliberate move away from a model where Zillow made money when a shopper raised a hand, toward one where it participates in — and tries to simplify — the entire transaction.

Executives see AI as central to the super app play. Zillow CTO David Beitel, who has led technology efforts at the company since 2005, said the new capabilities of large language models feel “pretty monumental.”

He said AI models have improved so much and so quickly that there is no single part of the business where Zillow isn’t exploring how to harness them.

“It’s really starting to change the way we think about presenting information and change the way that we interact with our customers,” Beitel said.

Long before Zillow launched an app within ChatGPT, the company has used AI in some form since its early days. It applied machine learning to create the “Zestimate” home value tool and later built out computer vision tools to enhance listings.

Now the company is using AI to boost CRM tools for real estate agents — summarizing calls, drafting follow‑up messages, prepping next‑step checklists, and reducing repetitive data entry. Zillow says agents have sent millions of AI‑assisted messages, and that those tools are improving conversion.

Inside Zillow’s own walls, the shift may be even more dramatic.

Beitel said software teams are shipping more code with the same headcount thanks to AI‑assisted development — in some cases, up to a 15% improvement in productivity. The company also uses internal copilots that sit on top of documents, Slack conversations and email, letting employees ask natural‑language questions against Zillow’s own data. Recruiters are using AI to help schedule interviews and coordinate with candidates.

Just in the past two years, Beitel said, the company has “much higher expectations of our team about embracing these tools and using them in their daily jobs.” Zillow encourages experimentation but stops short of mandating specific tools across every team, letting managers decide how to adapt LLMs to their own workflows.

Both executives stressed that, for all the automation, they don’t see AI replacing real estate professionals. Instead, they framed the technology as the next step in a long evolution that started when agents were gatekeepers of listing books and became guides in a world where buyers already know what’s on the market.

“It’s going to pull away all the busy work, all the back office work, all the coordination, all the data collection — all the stuff that a machine can do — to let the human do a great job of actually being your guide,” said Wacksman, who was named CEO in 2024, taking over for co-founder Rich Barton.

All of this is unfolding against a housing market that Wacksman describes as “bouncing along the bottom.” Existing home sales remain well below pre‑pandemic norms; affordability is still strained in many markets; and even optimistic forecasts call for only modest improvement this year. That puts pressure on Zillow’s bet that it can keep growing revenue at a double‑digit clip by capturing a bigger slice of every transaction, even if there aren’t many more transactions to go around. Zillow’s stock has fallen more than 30% in the past year.

At the same time, the company is facing louder questions from regulators and rivals about how much control one platform should have over the digital plumbing of the housing market. Zillow is a defendant in a high-profile antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and multiple states over its multifamily rental listings syndication deal with Redfin — a case that alleges the arrangement stifles competition in the rental advertising market. The company is also defending a lawsuit from brokerage Compass challenging Zillow’s private‑listing policies and a separate copyright infringement case from rival CoStar over the use of listing photos.

Wacksman said it hasn’t changed the core roadmap — or Zillow’s room to grow. He said the company still touches a single-digit share of U.S. transactions. “We can grow our business regardless of what happens in [the] macro, and regardless of the clouds from external forces,” he said.

Zillow Group let go of about 200 employees recently as part of performance-related role reductions, the Seattle-based real estate company confirmed to GeekWire on Friday.

“After thoughtful consideration, we made the decision to separate a small number of employees whose performance did not meet expectations,” a Zillow spokesperson said. “This decision is not connected to market conditions or recent business developments. We will continue to invest in the teams and roles needed to effectively deliver on our strategy.”

The company said the cuts — which represent about 2% of Zillow’s overall headcount — were part of the annual review process.

“We recognize the impact of these decisions and appreciate the contributions of each person, and we are committed to supporting those affected with respect and care,” the spokesperson added.

The reductions at Zillow come amid a period of significant layoffs at Seattle-area tech companies, including 16,000 additional corporate cuts at Amazon this week. Meta and Expedia Group also trimmed their workforces in the region.

Zillow is led by CEO Jeremy Wacksman who took over the role in August 2024 from co-founder and two-time CEO Rich Barton.

Founded in Seattle in 2005, Zillow moved to a remote-first workforce during the pandemic. The company still maintains a large footprint in downtown Seattle.

Zillow reported revenue of $676 million in the third quarter, up 16% year-over-year. Traffic to its mobile apps and sites was up 7% to 250 million average monthly unique users.

The Seahawks are going back to the Super Bowl. Seattle-based Redfin is going for the first time.

The 20-year-old real estate company, under new parent Rocket Companies, released a teaser video on Tuesday for a Super Bowl ad that will feature Lady Gaga performing the Mister Rogers classic “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

The reimagined theme song from the beloved American television series “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” will be part of a 60-second commercial debuting during the NFL’s big game on Feb. 8.

It’s part of a campaign “centered on home, community and connection,” according to Rocket, the Detroit-based fintech platform that completed its $1.75 billion acquisition of Redfin last July. “Told through a poignant human story and elevated by music as a shared emotional language, the work invites reflection on how people show up for one another where they live and the transformative power of being a caring neighbor.”

The video above serves as a behind-the-scenes look at Lady Gaga wrapping her head and voice around the song by Fred Rogers while recording at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, Calif. The 14-time Grammy winner is up for seven more awards at the 2026 musical showcase on Sunday.

During last year’s Super Bowl, Rocket’s “Own the Dream” campaign featured John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The song transitioned beyond the television screen to an in-stadium singalong with fans at the game.

Redfin launched in 2004 and went public in 2017 in a deal that valued the company at $1.73 billion.

The Seattle Seahawks will face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

Related:

• Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman departs after leading Seattle real estate giant for 20 years

The Pioneer Collective is expanding its co-working space in the Belltown neighborhood of downtown Seattle.

TPC is taking over 6,600 square feet of space directly above its current location in the historic Guiry Schillestad Building at 2101 1st Ave. The new footprint is just under 20,000 square feet.

The space, just a block from the Pike Place Market, was previously home to outdoor retailer Orvis and prior to that, Urban Hardwoods.

TPC, which was founded in 2014 by husband-and-wife team Christopher Hoyt and Audrey Hoyt, operates other co-working locations in Ballard, at the West Canal Yards development near Interbay, and in Tacoma, Wash.

“Even with the challenges downtown has faced, Belltown has been a great neighborhood for us,” TPC CEO Christopher Hoyt said in a news release. “Almost since opening, we’ve wanted more space at this location and we’re excited that we finally have the opportunity to expand.”

The expansion will give TPC extra meeting room capacity and additional private offices for teams of up to 10 employees. The project is currently in permit review and construction is expected to begin in February with an opening date planned for late summer.

Seattle’s co-working market ranks 14th nationally by total co-working square footage, with roughly 3.16 million square feet across about 160 spaces.

Related:

• Office vacancy hits another record in downtown Seattle despite new tech leases
• Pioneer Collective to open new co-working space at development along Ship Canal in Seattle

One of Seattle’s tallest skyscrapers has a new name that reflects JPMorganChase’s growing banking and technology hub in Seattle.

Formerly known as the Russell Investments Center, the building at 1301 Second Ave. is now the JPMorganChase Center.

The renaming coincides with JPMorganChase adding an additional 40,000 square feet at the 42-floor tower, which also houses Zillow Group and Perkins Coie.

The financial services giant, which now occupies 128,000 square feet, is also relocating its Seattle Tech Center from 1201 Third Ave. to the newly expanded space.

JPMorganChase has 850 employees in Seattle, including 400 tech workers — that’s up slightly from 380 people last year.

The company’s Seattle Tech Center opened in 2018, in part to tap into the region’s talent pool. The center focuses on areas including cybersecurity, cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. It’s led by Mamtha Banerjee, a computer scientist, business leader, and Seattle startup veteran.

JPMorganChase implemented a five-day in-office policy last year. It has more than 2,220 employees across 150 branches and corporate offices in Washington state. There are about 320,000 employees globally. The company recently opened a new headquarters in Manhattan.

The company also on Wednesday anounced $1.5 million in grants to five Seattle-area nonprofits: Business Impact NW, Friends of Little Saigon, Rainier Valley Community Development Fund, Seattle University’s RAMP-up, and the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict program of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle.

The office expansion comes as downtown Seattle hit another record high for vacancy rate last year at 34.7% in Q4, as hybrid work continues to weigh on the commercial real estate market.

Zillow once filled several floors of the JPMorganChase Center but scaled down after committing to remote work during the pandemic. More than 70% of the Zillow’s workforce is made up of remote employees.

Russell Investments moved its Seattle headquarters last year from 1301 Second Ave. to nearby Rainier Square.

Tech companies are still signing leases in downtown Seattle — but it’s not enough to reverse a pandemic-era slide that pushed office vacancy to another record high, reaching 34.7% in Q4.

The latest numbers from commercial real estate firm CBRE underscore how hybrid work and shrinking office footprints continue to weigh on a tech-heavy market like Seattle. The vacancy rate is up about two percentage points from a year ago, and a fivefold increase from before the pandemic.

Downtown Seattle lost 257,879 square feet of occupied space in Q4, driven by tenant “rightsizing” and reductions in average space requirements, according to CBRE.

Tech companies are still boosting leasing activity in downtown. Impinj renewed and expanded into 73,638 square feet at 400 Fairview, while DAT Solutions (which acquired Seattle startup Outgo last year) and Docker both took sublease space at the Maritime Building along the waterfront — 51,777 and 33,757 square feet, respectively.

But the data shows how Seattle’s commercial real estate market continues to struggle amid remote work and broader pressures including tech layoffs and companies using AI to operate with leaner teams. CoStar reported in November that Seattle recorded the slowest rent growth among the nation’s largest markets over the past year.

Meanwhile, the Eastside is showing early signs of stabilization, fueled in part by Microsoft’s new leases in Redmond and Amazon’s continued buildout in downtown Bellevue. Both companies are enforcing return-to-office policies.

Several technology companies have signed new or expanded leases on the Eastside in recent years, including OpenAI, Snap, Anduril, Shopify, Snowflake, Walmart, and Chewy.

“Notably, a growing number of new-to-market entrants … are choosing the Eastside over Seattle, drawn by Bellevue’s modern office inventory, business friendly climate and skilled technology workforce,” Broderick Group wrote in a new report.

Despite the positive signals, Broderick cautioned that vacancy is unlikely to fall sharply in the near term. Downtown Bellevue’s vacancy rate stood at 25.4% at the end of Q4, up from 16.8% a year ago.

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

The debate over private listings and pre-marketing in Washington state could soon reach a turning point if a bill requiring the public marketing of residential properties advances in the state legislature.

Washington Realtors is backing SB6091, a new draft bill aimed at curbing exclusive home marketing practices — while stopping short of mandating MLS participation. The trade group informed members of the effort on Jan. 9 in preparation for the start of Washington’s short legislative session this week. The organization shared the draft bill with Real Estate News and other media outlets on Jan. 12; Inman was first to report on the initiative. 

‘As consumer-friendly’ as possible

Ryan Beckett, Washington Realtors’ 2026 president, said the measure is designed to prioritize consumers rather than settle industry disputes over platforms or listing strategies. The draft bill would prohibit real estate brokers from marketing residential properties to a limited or exclusive group of buyers or brokers unless the property is also marketed publicly at the same time.

“The ultimate goal is being as consumer-friendly as humanly possible for anybody trying to buy or sell real property,” Beckett said of the effort. “When we keep having these conversations about private listing networks, we recognize that it really is at odds with that concept.”

Under the bill, brokers would still be free to use private listing networks or other selective marketing strategies — but only if the listing is also made available publicly “in some way, shape or form,” Beckett explained. 

“We’re not telling anybody they can’t use a private listing network, or that they can’t market their property the way they want to,” he said. “But if you do go forward with that particular strategy, you also have to make it available publicly.”

MLS entry not required: ‘We’re not giving parameters’ 

Unlike the National Association of Realtors’ Clear Cooperation Policy, the bill does not tie compliance to MLS rules or require brokers to include their listings in the MLS. Beckett emphasized that the language in the bill is intentionally platform-neutral. 

“Publicly marketing could be as simple as putting it on your website,” he said. “We’re not telling you you have to have it in the MLS. We’re not giving parameters other than saying it does need to be publicly available to the community.”

That flexibility means the bill would be less restrictive than Zillow’s listing access standards, which require broad public distribution of listings, or Northwest MLS’s policies prohibiting pre-marketing of listings and office exclusives. Those rules have put the two Washington state-based organizations at odds with brokerages in the “seller choice” camp — particularly Compass, which is suing both Zillow and NWMLS over their private listing policies.

A state effort with no industry partnerships involved  

Washington isn’t the first state to attempt to codify residential listing access in state law. 

Just last month, the Wisconsin legislature passed a bill requiring residential properties to be marketed “on one or more Internet platforms or websites accessible to the general public” within one business day of a signed listing agreement, unless the seller completes and signs a state-mandated disclosure form. The law is set to go into effect in January 2027.

A similar bill was introduced in Illinois last year — and in that case, Zillow was a key partner in the effort. But in Washington, Beckett said his organization deliberately avoided framing the bill as a response to specific companies or industry rivalries. 

“Zillow and Compass are both members of our organization,” he said. “We hate getting involved where members are being pitted against one another. We tried very, very hard to stay out of that completely.”

Transparency, consumer awareness key

Rather than taking a position on the existing private listings debate, Beckett said Washington Realtors is simply focused on transparency and access, and avoiding the “potential for problems,” such as the Fair Housing concerns frequently cited by private listing opponents.

“For us, that’s the big key — just making sure there’s enough transparency out there that consumers in the market are aware of what’s available,” Beckett said.

The legislation does include limited carve-outs for sellers with health, safety or confidentiality concerns, however, including in situations where medical issues would require limiting the number of people entering a home. Beckett said some of those exceptions already exist in state law, with others clarified in the new bill.

The bill has bipartisan support in both legislative chambers: In the Senate, sponsors include Sens. Marco Liias (D-21), Emily Alvarado (D-34), Chris Gildon (R-25), John Braun (R-20) and Jessica Bateman (D-22); in the House, the bill is sponsored by Reps. Strom Peterson (D-21) and April Connors (R-8), Washington Realtors told Real Estate News.

Glenn Kelman, the longtime CEO of Redfin and one of the most recognizable leaders in the U.S. real estate industry, is stepping down.

Kelman’s departure comes six months after Redfin completed its $1.75 billion acquisition to Rocket Companies. His last day is Friday.

“Redfin just completed our first phase as a Rocket company, integration,” Kelman wrote in an email to employees that he also posted on LinkedIn. “We’ll start the second, much-longer phase at next week’s all-company meeting, which is much-greater scale. Approaching that, I had to decide whether to be at Rocket for years.”

Rocket Companies CEO Varun Krishna will run Redfin until the company finds a permanent new leader. Kelman will remain in an advisory role through April 1.

“Instead, I want to try finding another mission-driven enterprise outside of real estate,” Kelman wrote. “I’m grateful that Rocket has turned out to be such a good owner of Redfin, and that Varun has been such a kind leader.”

Rocket’s acquisition of Redfin in July brought together the nation’s largest mortgage lender with the tech-enabled Seattle-based real estate brokerage. The deal valued Redfin at more than double its market capitalization prior to the acquisition’s public announcement in March 2025.

In an email to staff, obtained by GeekWire, Krishna described Redfin as the “front door to Rocket.”

“We are betting big on Redfin’s future,” he wrote in the memo. “More investment in brand, hiring, traffic growth, and innovation. We will aggressively play to win, with the full strength of Rocket behind this team.”

Krishna added: “Redfin is on the precipice of one of the most exciting transformations in its history, and we’re leaning into it.”

Kelman joined Redfin in 2005, a year after it launched, and helped guide the company from a small Seattle startup into a nationally known real estate brokerage and technology platform. Redfin went public in 2017 in a deal that valued the company at $1.73 billion.

Known for his candid communication style, Kelman frequently spoke publicly about housing affordability, agent compensation, and the structural challenges facing the real estate market. In recent years, he oversaw workforce reductions and cost-cutting measures as higher interest rates slowed home sales and forced real estate tech companies to recalibrate growth expectations.

“Glenn pioneered home search as we know it today and transformed a visionary startup into the Redfin we know today,” Rocket said in a statement to GeekWire. “He built a company that saved thousands of homeowners money and made the American Dream more accessible. We wish Glenn well in his next chapter.”

In his note to employees — titled “Unemployed, In Greenland” — Kelman said he’ll look for a “mission-driven enterprise outside of real estate” for his next opportunity.

He described Redfin as “the only real estate company to take full responsibility for our customers, from click to keys.”

“For most of Redfin’s history, our website expansion was slowed by our brokerage, and our brokerage expansion was slowed by employing our agents,” he wrote. “But standing behind our service was always worthwhile. Now with portals, lenders and brokers racing to stitch together their services, our patient approach has turned out to be the best way to help people all the way home.”

Redfin grew revenue by 7% in 2024 to $1.04 billion, with a net loss of $164.8 million, up from $130 million in 2023. Its stock had fallen more than 30% in the month leading up to the acquisition announcement in March.

Detroit-based Rocket Companies went public in 2020. In addition to mortgage lending products, Rocket also sells personal loans and other fintech offerings. Last year Rocket acquired mortgage lender Mr. Cooper Group in a $9.4 billion stock deal.

Microsoft’s decision to renew a large swath of office space in Redmond is emerging as a key stabilizing force for the Eastside office market near Seattle.

That’s one takeaway from a new report by commercial real estate firm Broderick Group, which highlighted Microsoft’s renewal for 396,228 square feet at Redmond Town Center, just north of the company’s main headquarters campus. The deal was one of the largest office transactions on the Eastside in 2025.

Microsoft confirmed the new lease when contacted by GeekWire. The tech giant also confirmed a report from the Seattle Times that it is reoccupying space at the Millennium Corporate Park location in Redmond, where it has about 480,000 square feet. The company had previously offered that space for sublease.

While Microsoft was responsible for some of the region’s largest space givebacks last year — including a 750,000-square-foot reduction at The Bravern in Bellevue — the latest commitments suggest the company is holding onto its remaining footprint as it begins enforcing a new return-to-office policy. This past September the company announced that it would implement a three-day in-office requirement, starting across the Seattle region in February before expanding to other U.S. locations and eventually globally.

Both Microsoft and Amazon — and their respective in-office policies — appear to be playing an outsized role in determining how quickly the Eastside’s office recovery takes shape, even as overall vacancy reached 21.8% in the fourth quarter.

Amazon, which last year increased its own in-office policy from three to five days a week, continues building out major projects in Bellevue, including Bellevue 600, The Artise, and West Main. The company employs more than 12,000 people in Bellevue as part of what it calls its “Puget Sound headquarters” which also includes its Seattle campus. Amazon cut 14,000 workers in broad layoffs in October, with 2,303 corporate employees in Washington state.

A growing roster of technology companies has also signed new or expanded leases on the Eastside in recent years, including OpenAI, Snap, Anduril, Shopify, Snowflake, Walmart, and Chewy.

“Notably, a growing number of new-to-market entrants … are choosing the Eastside over Seattle, drawn by Bellevue’s modern office inventory, business friendly climate and skilled technology workforce,” Broderick’s report noted.

Despite the positive signals, the firm cautioned that vacancy is unlikely to fall sharply in the near term. Downtown Bellevue’s vacancy rate stood at 25.4% at the end of the year.

The report also noted that more than 1% of the Eastside’s office inventory has been removed through office-to-residential conversions.

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

Could Google crush the “portal wars” once and for all?

A key Google partner is starting to display home listing details directly in search results, prompting some industry experts and analysts to question what impact the feature could have on the traffic — and financials — of major portal players like Zillow, Realtor.com and others.

A ‘controlled experiment’: In some markets, Google’s data partner HouseCanary and its IDX site ComeHome are beginning to experiment with placing home listings at the top of Google search results, complete with basic details, price, images and a “Request a tour” button. According to HouseCanary, the company is licensed in all 50 states and in Washington, D.C., as a full-service brokerage. 

Real estate consultant and analyst Mike DelPrete was the first to report on the pilot listing initiative. 

HouseCanary offered some insight into the “controlled experiment” via an announcement on LinkedIn this week, suggesting that the company and Google “are innovating” and “pushing into new territory” with the effort.

“Before this test started, we contacted and notified every MLS in the regions included. We are working with those MLSs directly and we have active, ongoing communication with them throughout the test. If an MLS has questions or concerns, we address them directly and promptly,” the announcement reads. 

“The goal is simple: improve how consumers discover listings while staying aligned with the rules and expectations of the MLS community. We are excited about what we are building with Google, and we are equally committed to doing it the right way with the MLSs and other stakeholders. We will continue to communicate directly with the MLSs involved and respond quickly to any concerns.”

Impacts of previous search shifts: The move to incorporate home listing information into Google comes over a year after the search giant started integrating AI summaries directly into the top of search results. A July Pew Research Center study found that web users were less likely to click into other pages — such as news media and other outlets that had long depended on traffic as a metric for determining revenue — since Google incorporated AI summaries.

Some major mainstream news sites have seen traffic drop upwards of 30-40% year-over-year partially thanks to AI summaries, NPR reported in July. 

What analysts are saying: There may already be concern about what kind of impact home listing summaries on Google pages could have on the top portals. As the leader in home search, Zillow would be the site with the most to lose. At the time of publishing this story, Zillow’s share price has dropped more than 8% since the opening bell on Dec. 15. 

But some analysts say the concerns may be exaggerated.

“While we don’t expect a direct near-term impact on Zillow’s business, given that most of Zillow’s traffic is direct (e.g., Zillow.com, StreetEasy.com, mobile apps) and Google’s new product is currently limited to select markets and mobile browsers, we view this development as a long-term risk for real estate portals like Zillow,” Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Ng wrote in a recent note to clients, CNBC reports.

Piper Sandler called the concerns “overblown,” and analysts with Oppenheimer and Wells Fargo also appeared to be less concerned about immediate impacts on Zillow’s traffic and revenue. Instead, they suggest that the experiment may simply present a new opportunity for Google to generate more revenue.

Wells Fargo analyst Alec Brondolo sees “Zillow, Homes.com, Realtor.com, etc. bidding for home listing ad units rather than Google attempting to monetize directly with an ad product sold to agents,” CNBC reported. 

In a blog post, Victor Lund, managing partner of real estate consulting firm WAV Group, highlighted some issues with the pilot and suggested it could overstep existing norms and standards with the IDX protocol. 

“IDX was never designed to allow listings to be turned into paid media inventory on global ad networks. If this practice stands, it redefines IDX from a display-based cooperation agreement into an advertising license, something neither MLSs nor brokers have agreed to,” Lund wrote.

Real Estate News has reached out to HouseCanary for more details on the scope and scale of the experiment and to Zillow for comment on the new Google feature.

This story first appeared on Real Estate News.

Home search leader Zillow has changed the way that it shares climate risk information — directing visitors to the website of data partner First Street rather than surfacing it on Zillow home detail pages.

“This update ensures consumers continue to have access to important information to help them consider factors such as insurance, repair costs and long-term homeownership planning, and reflects our long-standing commitment to empowering consumers with transparent information,” a Zillow spokesperson shared with Real Estate News over email when asked about the move.

What’s less clear is the role one of the nation’s largest MLSs played in the change.

First reported by The New York Times in late November, Zillow’s removal of climate risk data from its listings comes as industry stakeholders vigorously debate over the ownership of listing data and as home insurance prices continue to skyrocket.

Why Zillow made the change — for all its listings

The New York Times story highlighted complaints from real estate agents along with the California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS) and its CEO Art Carter about perceived discrepancies and inconsistencies in the climate risk data, and implied that Zillow’s change was done under pressure from CRMLS.

In a statement shared with Real Estate News, a Zillow spokesperson said that the change was made to comply with different MLS requirements but did not highlight CRMLS specifically. Zillow’s change in the way it displays climate risk data has been applied to all listings on the site, not just homes in California or those within CRMLS’ jurisdiction. 

“Zillow remains committed to providing consumers with information that helps them make informed real estate decisions. We updated our climate risk product experience to adhere to varying MLS requirements and maintain a consistent experience for all consumers,” the spokesperson said.

However, other leading portals are still showing climate data in home listings. “You can still find property level climate risk scores on Redfin,” Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather wrote in a social media post that linked to the New York Times story. 

CRMLS’s role and response

“There was no change in the rules,” a CRMLS spokesperson said over email when asked if there was a specific update in MLS standards and practices that would have led to Zillow’s move.  

So why now? If Zillow has implied that the change was made in order to remain in compliance with MLS practices, what exactly was CRMLS’s role in the change to home search site’s display of climate data? The dispute between Zillow and CRMLS could also be viewed as another example of the ongoing fight among major industry stakeholders over the control of listings and listing data. 

In October, CRMLS and Compass engaged in a feud over the MLS’s end user licensing agreement, which Compass CEO Robert Reffkin argued forced “over 100,000 agents to accept a 10-page agreement giving CRMLS the right to sell the agents’ content and contribution.” Carter said the MLS serves its users by managing the data they provide “as a set, not as a bunch of individual fragments” and the agreement reflects that.

The impact of skyrocketing insurance rates

As organized real estate and home search sites debate the accuracy of climate data and the merits of displaying it on property listings, one issue that isn’t being disputed is the rising cost of home insurance. Zillow’s move to point consumers off the site to explore climate risks comes at a time when more homeowners are seeing major increases in their insurance premiums and others are actually seeing the steep costs of insurance eat into their home value. 

While speaking at a November event for ResiClub, Cotality Chief Data and Analytics Officer John Rogers said the average annual change in homeowners insurance premiums was 14% for both 2023 and 2024 and is expected to be 10% in 2025. Rogers also forecasted an 8% rise in premiums for 2026 and in 2027. 

But California home owners and buyers are being hit particularly hard. According to the California Association of Realtors’ latest State of the Market annual report and survey, over a quarter of member agents signaled that their buyers were having difficulty obtaining insurance. And the number of buyers losing out on a home because of issues with home insurance has been increasing. Last year, over 14% of member agents reported that at least one sale fell through because buyers could not secure homeowners insurance while the number rose to over 16% in 2025.

Real estate brokerage platform Redfin released a conversational chatbot to help house hunters search for homes using natural language.

The tool lets users describe what they want and refine results through back-and-forth dialogue. Unlike real estate platforms that offer only one-off natural-language queries, Redfin says its chatbot can ask clarifying questions, respond to feedback, and surface more tailored recommendations.

“We relied on search filters to define queries for years, but people share more about their preferences when it’s a conversation,” Ariel Dos Santos, Redfin senior vice president of product and design, said in a statement.

Seattle-based Redfin, acquired by Rocket Companies in July, built the system with Sierra, the AI customer experience platform recently valued at $10 billion.

Redfin and other real estate companies are racing to deploy conversational AI tools. Last month, fellow Seattle real estate giant Zillow unveiled the first real estate app within ChatGPT.

Redfin’s new conversational interface aims to mirror how buyers talk to a real agent — but with the advantage of scanning every listing on Redfin nationwide. Home shoppers can tell the chatbot what they’re looking for, react to suggested listings (“more like this, but with an extra bedroom”), or adjust search criteria as new ideas arise. The feature also supports multiple languages.

As buyers interact with the chatbot, it “learns from real user conversations” to deliver increasingly relevant options over time, according to the company.

Early testing suggests that the feature is well-received. Users of the conversational search technology viewed nearly twice as many homes as those using filtered searches. They were also 47% more inclined to ask for a tour or other Redfin services, the company reported.

The tool is available on Redfin.com and mobile web, and will come to Redfin’s iOS app in December.

Last year the company launched its “Ask Redfin” generative AI assistant designed for homebuyer questions about a specific listing.

Arrived, a Seattle-based tech startup that turns rental homes into a mainstream asset class for everyday investors, raised $27 million in new funding to support its new “stock market for real estate” platform.

Neo led the latest round, which included Forerunner Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, Core, and other backers. Total funding is north of $60 million.

Arrived (formerly Arrived Homes) lets people buy fractional shares of single-family rental homes and vacation rentals for as little as $100. It’s pitched as an alternative way to gain exposure to real estate without taking on a full mortgage or managing a property.

The company identifies and acquires rental properties, then handles financing, renovations, property management and tenant relationships. Investors can buy shares in individual homes or pooled funds through the Arrived website. They earn quarterly dividends from rent plus a share of any appreciation when the property is sold after a multi-year holding period.

Since launching in 2019, nearly 900,000 registered investors have invested more than $340 million on the Arrived platform. The company says it has distributed more than $55 million and funded more than 550 properties across 65 markets in the U.S.

This week the company officially announced its new Secondary Market — a peer-to-peer marketplace where investors can buy and sell shares of rental homes directly from one another.

The market, which debuted earlier this year, saw investors place more than 57,000 buy and sell orders in its first three weeks of availability.

“We believe real estate investing is going to move online,” Ryan Frazier, co-founder and CEO of Arrived, said in a statement. “Our vision is a future where real estate investing feels just like investing in public companies — where anyone can buy and sell shares of properties in minutes, not months.”

Arrived earns revenue through multiple fee streams tied to the acquisition and ongoing management of rental-property investments. The model includes:

• A one-time sourcing/acquisition fee charged when it buys a property and raises investor capital.
• An ongoing assets under management (AUM) fee, paid quarterly or annually based on property value or investor equity.
• Real estate agent rebate income from the acquisition side, received from the seller’s agent when Arrived buys a property.

Earlier this year Arrived launched a “Seattle City Fund,” part of new product designed to give investors targeted exposure to a single metro area’s housing market without having to pick individual properties.

Arrived is part of a wave of tech companies applying fintech, crowdfunding, and fractional-ownership models to residential real estate. Competitors include Landa and Lofty, which describes itself as a “NASDAQ for real estate.”

The model isn’t without controversy. Critics argue that turning more single-family homes into investment products can worsen affordability by adding investor demand to already tight markets.

Arrived raised a $25 million Series A round in 2022. The company declined to share an updated valuation.

Arrived leadership includes Frazier (formerly with Simply Measured and Sprout Social); CTO Kenny Cason (Simply Measured); and COO Alejandro Chouza (Oyo and Uber).

Other investors include Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff; and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

Zillow continues to be an overachiever, at least with its financial performance. 

The home search giant’s revenue has consistently beat expectations for the past two years, and Q3 was no different: Revenue was $676 million for the third quarter, up 16% year-over-year and above the company’s previous guidance, driven by the strength of its rentals and mortgage divisions.

Rentals revenue was up 41% year-over-year to $174 million, while mortgage revenue increased 36% to $53 million, according to Zillow’s shareholder letter. The company’s main revenue stream, residential, rose 7% to $435 million.

Zillow also turned a profit, netting $10 million during the quarter and sustaining its run of profitability for a third consecutive quarter.

What Zillow had to say

While Zillow’s financials were strong, it was also mired in litigation during the quarter, something CEO Jeremy Wacksman touched on during the earnings call.

On lawsuits: Wacksman briefly addressed some of the company’s litigation issues, particularly the lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission over Zillow’s rental agreement with Redfin. 

The FTC alleges that Zillow and Redfin illegally conspired to eliminate competition in the rental listings market with a syndication agreement. Attorney generals from five states filed a similar lawsuit a day later.

Wacksman noted that they’ve had the agreement in place for about six months and have seen the benefits for both consumers and property managers.

“So to us it’s obviously pro-consumer and pro-property manager, which makes it pro-competitive,” Wacksman said. “We look forward to making that case as the process plays out.”

On the Compass-Anywhere merger: Investors asked what impact the deal might have if it leads to more private listings — a core part of Compass’ three-phased marketing strategy — which are largely prohibited on Zillow’s site after it adopted new listing standards (prompting a lawsuit from Compass).

Wacksman said he doesn’t foresee any big impact to Zillow’s business.

“We do see maybe more noise around hidden listings and the potential to push more hidden listings onto sellers and to buyers and to harm consumers,” Wacksman said, adding that much of the industry is on board with Zillow’s private listing ban.

Consumers “don’t want to put the internet back in the box, and we expect that behavior to continue, because agents are trying to do right by their sellers and sell their homes,” Wacksman added.

Key numbers

Revenue: $676 million, up 16% year-over-year. Residential increased 7% to $435 million; mortgage revenue was up 36% to $53 million; and rentals revenue climbed 41% to $174 million.

Cash and investments: $1.4 billion at the end of September, up from $1.2 billion at the end of June.

Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization): $165 million in Q3, up from $127 million a year earlier.

Net income/loss: A gain of $10 million in Q3, up from $2 million the previous quarter, an improvement over its $20 million loss a year ago.

Traffic and visits: Traffic across all Zillow Group websites and apps totaled 250 million average monthly unique users in Q3, up 7% year-over-year, the company said. Total visits were 2.5 billion in Q3, up 4% year-over-year. 

Q4 outlook: For the fourth quarter, Zillow estimates revenue will be in the $645 million to $655 million range, which would represent high single-digit year-over-year growth.

Notable moves

Zillow was busy dealing with litigation during the third quarter:

• The private listings lawsuit filed by Compass in June has resulted in an ongoing legal back-and-forth between the two parties.
• CoStar filed a copyright infringement case against Zillow in July over the alleged improper use of photos.
• The FTC case filed in September has the potential to affect Zillow’s business structure.
• Also in September, a class action lawsuit was filed alleging inflated costs related to Zillow’s flex referral program, and a former employee sued the company over alleged discrimination.

The company also had positive news to share during the quarter, noting in September that more than 50 brokerages had adopted Zillow Showcase. Newly named partners include The Agency, LPT Realty and Century 21 Masters in California.

“At The Agency, we’re always looking for ways to give our agents every advantage in showcasing their listings,” said Mauricio Umansky, CEO and founder of The Agency, adding that the partnership “allows us to maximize exposure, put homes in the best light and reach more potential buyers.”

In July, Zillow unveiled a new suite of products including Skytour, which allows home shoppers to get an interactive birds-eye view of a home and its surroundings, and is available exclusively to Showcase clients. 

The company also hired a new chief economist in the third quarter. Mischa Fisher, who most recently taught data science at Northwestern University, has experience analyzing housing, labor and consumer spending data. She replaces former chief economist Skylar Olsen.

Editor’s note: Story updated with details from the company’s earnings call.

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

Soon after Zillow announced it was the first real estate company to launch an app in ChatGPT, some in the industry responded with alarm.

The core concern was whether the integration violates licensing rules, but the conversations touched on broader issues: How should listing data be used and controlled? How should the industry be thinking about data standards in the context of emerging AI technologies?

‘At the forefront of generative AI adoption’

In its Oct. 6 announcement, Zillow said ChatGPT users could now add the Zillow app to the popular AI chatbot and explore listings using natural language search. The app — within ChatGPT — can then display property info with links back to the original listings on Zillow. 

The integration was designed to bring “simplicity to the home journey within ChatGPT,” said David Beitel, Zillow’s chief technology officer. The partnership, he added, “puts Zillow at the forefront of generative AI adoption.”

‘What is reasonable control’ of data?

Almost immediately, some people wondered whether Zillow was following the terms of its IDX data licensing agreements with multiple listing services.

“Zillow’s ChatGPT integration raises the question: what is reasonable control of the display of MLS data?” Leah Ingalsbe, executive vice president of MLS and technology at the Greater Springfield Board of Realtors, wrote on LinkedIn. 

“Granted, licensing agreements differ from one MLS to another, but this development offers plenty of food for thought on emerging technologies that were nonexistent when many of our terms of use were penned,” Ingalsbe wrote.

She did not respond to a request for further comment.

No ‘permission to share’

A Texas real estate agent was more definitive in his stance. Danny Frank, an agent at JLA Realty and a former chair of the Houston Association of Realtors, wrote a blog post expressing his concerns, and in an interview with Real Estate News, said he believes Zillow is in violation of IDX rules.

“The brokers give permission to HAR, and they do not have my permission to share that [listing data] with another third party site, unless everyone has equal access to that,” Frank said. “Right now, only Zillow has access to that [ChatGPT integration], and they’re using that to their benefit.” 

Frank has also filed a complaint with HAR, which told Real Estate News, “We are reviewing the matter and will take appropriate action if any issues are identified.”

Who’s displaying the listings?

The National Association of Realtors’ IDX policy requires all displays of IDX listings to “be under the actual and apparent control of the participant [broker].”

Victor Lund, founding partner and co-CEO of real estate consulting firm WAV Group, has asserted that Zillow is violating this requirement, because its license allows the display of MLS data on Zillow.com and its mobile apps, not on another domain.

Lund contends that, “From the consumer’s perspective, they’re using ChatGPT … and simply invoking Zillow as a tool inside that environment.”

While NAR has not taken a stance on the Zillow integration, the association released a statement on Oct. 21 advising MLSs to consider “whether MLS data is being transmitted to an unauthorized party, if the displaying Participant maintains ‘control’ over their display, and if the display fulfills the disclosure and display requirements outlined in local IDX rules” when assessing compliance.

NAR also clarified that “the display of MLS data on mobile apps is permitted under the existing IDX policy.”

Zillow outlines its compliance measures

The company went through “a painstaking process” to make sure it was following MLS rules, according to Errol Samuelson, Zillow’s chief industry development officer, during a recent Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered podcast.

They also worked with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to ensure IDX data would not be used to train the AI model. “It was a deep collaboration, and they’ve been very respectful of the different industry rules and data privacy and federal laws and so on,” said Josh Weisberg, SVP of AI at Zillow, during the podcast. 

Zillow addressed some of the other industry concerns in its FAQ.

Regarding third-party display of data, the FAQ explains that after a user enters a prompt within the app, ChatGPT relays it to Zillow, which “sends a response that is displayed in the Zillow App, but that data does not go to ChatGPT” — in other words, the chatbot itself is not displaying MLS data.

As for the “participant control” requirement, the FAQ says “the Zillow App was built by Zillow to be IDX-compliant and is operated by, and controlled by Zillow, just as on the Zillow website and mobile app.”

Real Estate News reached out to Zillow multiple times for further comment and Zillow declined to speak on the record.

Opening a back door to data?

Web browsers like Google display links to Zillow listings, but they don’t create a downloadable spreadsheet of listing data. Will Zillow’s ChatGPT integration provide such a list? Yes.

Real Estate News tested this out by asking the integrated app for listings in a certain market and price range, which it displayed. After prompting the app with a series of additional questions, the app said it could “pull all the data the widget actually loaded” — meaning the data from the Zillow integration or “connector” itself. 

Ultimately, it captured data for 100 listings in a downloadable file. (See the exact prompts and responses at the end of this story.)

Lund believes this could open the door for third parties to capture listing data “and [use] it for commercial purposes” or “track and monitor listings” using an external system.

MLSs taking a closer look — but not saying much

Real Estate News repeated listing searches for several markets and sent the ChatGPT-created spreadsheets to the relevant MLSs. Some declined to comment on the record (Bright MLS, California Regional MLS) or did not respond to requests for comment (Miami Realtors MLS, BeachesMLS, UtahRealEstate.com, GSBOR).

Others, including Stellar MLS, Georgia MLS and NTREIS, said they were “discussing internally” or “still investigating” whether the Zillow-ChatGPT integration complies with IDX policies. 

But a spokesperson for North Carolina’s Canopy MLS said “the Zillow app remains compliant with our IDX rules at this time,” though they declined to comment further. 

Lund said he was “not surprised” MLSs weren’t talking publicly about the integration. “They’re in the middle of trying to understand it,” he said. “This is all brand-new information.”

Another reason MLSs might be keeping quiet?

“We’re in a very litigious time in our industry, more than I’ve ever seen it,” said Russ Cofano, co-founder and principal of Alloy Advisors and a licensed attorney. 

“I think people are going to be very cautious about taking approaches that could result in litigation, and doing their due diligence before they try to make any decisions that could create problems for other companies, whether it’s Zillow or anybody else,” Cofano said.

Cofano wouldn’t share a personal opinion on compliance, but he noted that “there may be some unintended consequences from this type of integration, and those things should be addressed so that we don’t have easy ways for people to misuse MLS data.”

A path forward?

Still, Cofano said he hoped the new app would spur MLSs to reach out to Zillow — not just to gauge compliance, but to learn from their innovation.

“If really this industry is about serving consumers, then we should be applauding Zillow … for trying to do something that exposes authorized listing data to more people in the way that we all know is coming, which is AI search and discovery,” Cofano said.

The industry gets “wrapped around the axle on this ownership of data issue, and sometimes … forget what the objective here is, and that is not to own the data, but to facilitate buyers looking at sellers’ homes for sale and doing transactions.”

A peek inside the Zillow-ChatGPT app

Here’s what happened when we tried the Zillow-ChatGPT app for ourselves — and asked it for the data.

Using an individual, paid ChatGPT account on a web browser, Real Estate News added the Zillow app to the account and asked, “Zillow, please show me for-sale listings in Orlando, Florida, priced between $0 and $400K.” ChatGPT displayed a map with red, pinned listings and their prices. 

When asked, “Can you get the data used to display the widget I’m seeing? All of it?” ChatGPT replied, “I can pull all the data the widget actually loaded (that’s the first page of results—up to ~100 listings with full details like address, price, beds/baths, sqft, lot size, lat/long, home type/status, and the Zillow URL).”

ChatGPT then said it could export those 100 listings and said it would “need to run multiple paged fetches” in order to capture every matching property. It then offered to deliver those first 100 listings as CSV and JSON files. When told to “go ahead,” it delivered those downloadable files, providing data for those 100 listings. 

When asked, “Where did you get the data for these files?” the reply was “From the Zillow connector powering the embedded map/widget you used here. When you asked for Orlando, FL homes $0–$400k, I called the Zillow tool behind the scenes; it returned the first page of listing payloads (what the widget loaded to render those cards). I saved that exact response as the raw JSON and a flattened CSV.”

Pottery Northwest, a longtime ceramics nonprofit in Seattle, is moving to a new home at the base of an Amazon headquarters tower next year.

The 59-year-old organization is leaving Pioneer Square and moving to a 10,000-square-foot location in Amazon’s Nitro North building. The space in the Denny Triangle neighborhood at Seventh Avenue and Bell Street was previously occupied by Glassybaby.

The Seattle Times reported on the planned move on Friday.

Pottery Northwest, which offers ceramics workspaces, classes, exhibitions, artist talks, and more, plans to open in fall 2026 under a 10-year lease. PNW said it is looking forward to being able to use its large gas kilns again — an essential element for advanced ceramics. The location across from The Spheres will also feature a prominent retail space and free parking.

The move of a scrappy arts nonprofit onto Amazon’s sprawling downtown campus of glass skyscrapers matches one made last year by Gage Academy of Art. That 36-year-old Seattle institution moved from a 100-year-old building on Capitol Hill into Amazon’s re:Invent tower to occupy 14,000 square feet across two floors.

Amazon provided Gage with more than $7.5 million in rent assistance over 10 years, and the company offset a significant portion of the cost of construction and space improvement.

GeekWire reached out to Amazon and Pottery Northwest to see if any similar financial assistance was being offered. PNW does say on its website that it’s launching a $2.1 million fundraising campaign “to fund the construction and activation of our new home.”

Amazon has previously said that “creating space for the arts is vital for fostering a thriving downtown.” 

“The new facility strengthens Seattle’s creative economy by expanding opportunities and is a stable foundation for long-term community building,” Ed King, executive director of PNW, said in a statement.

This story first appeared on Real Estate News.

Five states including Washington are suing Zillow and Redfin over a rental listings agreement the companies reached earlier this year — just one day after the Federal Trade Commission filed its own lawsuit against the home search giants.

The new complaint was filed on Oct. 1 in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia.

How we got here: On Feb. 11, Zillow and Redfin said they’d reached a deal to make Zillow the exclusive multifamily rental listings provider for Redfin’s family of websites, which include Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com. A news release at the time said the partnership would “give renters access to a larger pool of available apartments” and enable property owners to “reach an even wider audience of renters across multiple platforms.”

Following an investigation into the deal, the FTC sued the companies on Sept. 30, alleging that the $100 million deal violated federal antitrust laws and was part of Zillow’s efforts to wipe out “critical” market competition.

What the new lawsuit says: The 36-page filing mirrors the FTC lawsuit, alleging that Zillow “has no interest in continuing to compete with Redfin” and claiming that the companies’ partnership constitutes “an unlawful agreement to remove competition from this already highly concentrated market.”

Which states are behind it? Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Virginia and Washington state have all signed on to the Oct. 1 lawsuit.

Attorneys General Kris Mayes of Arizona, William Tong of Connecticut and Nicholas Brown of Washington noted the high cost of living their constituents are facing in separate statements about the suit.

“Rent is completely unaffordable right now, and this deal is going to make things worse,” Tong said. “This unfair and anticompetitive agreement between listing giants Zillow and Redfin will jack up costs for property managers, who will pass those costs on to renters.”

“Amid a housing crisis in Washington, ensuring robust competition in rental advertising is vital,” Brown said in a statement. “Enforcing our antitrust laws to keep the marketplace fair, protect consumers, and prevent companies from building monopolies is a priority for our office.”

What Zillow had to say: “Our listing syndication with Redfin benefits both renters and property managers and has expanded renters’ access to multifamily listings across multiple platforms,” a Zillow spokesperson said in a statement sent to Real Estate News. “It is pro-competitive and pro-consumer by connecting property managers to more high-intent renters so they can fill their vacancies and more renters can get home. We remain confident in this partnership and the enhanced value it has delivered and will continue to deliver to consumers.” 

What Redfin had to say: “Redfin strongly disagrees with the allegations and is confident we will be vindicated by a court of law,” the company said in a statement sent to Real Estate News. “Our partnership with Zillow has given Redfin.com visitors access to more rental listings and our advertising customers access to more renters. By the end of 2024, it was clear that the existing number of Redfin advertising customers couldn’t justify the cost of maintaining our rentals sales force. Partnering with Zillow cut those costs and enabled us to invest more in rental-search innovations on Redfin.com, directly benefiting apartment seekers.”

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

The Federal Trade Commission is suing real estate giants Zillow and Redfin, alleging the two companies illegally conspired to eliminate competition in the rental listings market.

In a Sept. 30 complaint, the agency claims the companies violated federal antitrust laws when Zillow paid Redfin $100 million to have Zillow be the exclusive provider of multifamily rental listings on Redfin and its owned sites, Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com.

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Alexandria Division.

FTC says partnership eliminates ‘critical competition’: “The practical outcome of the agreement is obvious: Redfin has terminated its existing multifamily advertising business operations and, for the duration of the agreement, has stopped competing to provide [Internet Listing Services] advertising for multifamily properties,” the filing says.

“The wholesale elimination of critical competition in this highly concentrated space will harm rental advertisers and the Americans who rely on ILSs to find their next home.”

Taming a ‘fierce’ rival: The partially redacted complaint notes that Zillow, Redfin and CoStar (through Apartments.com) dominate the rental listing space and “competed fiercely” for years before Zillow and Redfin made their deal in February. As part of that agreement, Redfin allegedly agreed not to compete with Zillow in the advertising of multifamily rental listings for up to nine years.

This means Redfin agreed to “stop selling multifamily advertising, to terminate its existing multifamily advertising contracts, and to transition those customers to Zillow,” including by turning over “competitively sensitive” information to Zillow, its “direct, horizontal competitor,” according to the complaint. 

“Revenue from attracting new advertising customers will no longer serve as an incentive for Redfin to increase prospective renter traffic because Redfin will no longer be allowed or able to acquire new advertising customers,” the complaint says.

Redfin no longer ‘an independent and vibrant competitor’: The Zillow-Redfin deal resulted in the termination of some 450 Redfin employees who had previously supported Redfin’s rental listing business. As part of the deal, Redfin agreed to help Zillow hire them, the complaint added.

“In effect, Defendants have agreed to transform Redfin from an independent and vibrant competitor that markets and sells its own ILS multifamily advertising into one of several websites that provide nothing more than a copy of Zillow’s ILS listings,” the complaint says.

The “obviously anticompetitive” deal will mean “reduced choice, higher prices, and reduced quality” for multifamily rental advertising customers and such customers and renters alike would be better off through “continued competition to earn their business and engagement on the merits of Zillow’s and Redfin’s respective, independent offerings,” the complaint added.  

What Zillow had to say: A Zillow spokesperson said their listing syndication deal with Redfin is “pro-competitive and pro-consumer,” expanding “renters’ access to multifamily listings across multiple platforms” and connecting property managers to “more high-intent renters so they can fill their vacancies and more renters can get home.”

What Redfin had to say: A spokesperson for Redfin said the company “strongly disagrees with the FTC’s allegations,” noting that the partnership “has given Redfin.com visitors access to more rental listings and our advertising customers access to more renters.”

“By the end of 2024, it was clear that the existing number of Redfin advertising customers couldn’t justify the cost of maintaining our rentals sales force. Partnering with Zillow cut those costs and enabled us to invest more in rental-search innovations on Redfin.com, directly benefiting apartment seekers,” the spokesperson added.

Portals could be forced to sell off assets, restructure businesses: The complaint alleges violations of the Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and FTC Act and seeks various forms of relief, though no specific monetary damages were disclosed in the filing.

The FTC has asked for a permanent injunction against the defendants’ alleged anticompetitive conduct and “structural relief … to cure any anticompetitive harm, prevent any future harm, and undo the continuing effects of past harm, including but not limited to, divestiture of assets, divestiture or reconstruction of businesses, and such other relief sufficient to restore the competition that would exist absent the anticompetitive conduct.”

The federal agency is also asking the court for an order requiring Zillow and Redfin “to file periodic compliance reports with the FTC.”

Havium, a Seattle startup that helps people invest in and own single-family rental properties, raised $550,000 in a recent funding round as it continues to evolve its offerings.

Since launching in 2016, and being profiled by GeekWire in 2022, Havium has become a full-service platform that handles all of the operational burden associated with single-family rental (SFR) ownership.

Havium launched a full cash management service that handles all payment responsibilities — such as mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities, HOA dues, etc. — for each Havium property, to insulate clients from such obligations post-acquisition.

Havium was founded by CEO Jamie Nacht, his wife Cristin Nacht, and former CTO Arash Motamedi.

Jamie Nacht said Havium has helped clients acquire about $40 million in rental properties to date and currently manages $25 million under its full-service model.

The company earns revenue by taking a fee on each client transaction and by managing the ongoing operations of each property.

“We align directly with our clients — when they invest and their assets perform well, so do we,” Nacht said.

Havium operates in seven Pacific Northwest markets and expects to enter two or three new markets by the end of the year.

The startup has raised $590,000 to date, and the new round — funded entirely by angel investors — will fuel continued product development, backend infrastructure improvements, and geographic expansion, according to Nacht.

A Seattle-area startup is moving to a new headquarters with room to more than triple its headcount, two months after raising $100 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion. And it expects workers to be there five days a week.

No, this is not a story from 2019.

Statsig, a four-year-old Bellevue-based company that makes software testing and product experimentation tools, is expanding into a two-building campus that can accommodate 450 to 500 employees — a major milestone for a startup that began in a tiny Kirkland office in 2021.

The company has differentiated itself with an unusual policy of requiring employees to work in the office five days a week, in contrast with the post-pandemic hybrid and remote work practices that remain common among many startups to this day.

Statsig’s new headquarters, located at 3106 160th Ave. SE, offers upgraded amenities including gym and showers, a wellness room, outdoor seating, and a film studio. It includes an atrium large enough for Statsig’s daily all-hands meetings.

The office “is central to the culture we’re trying to build,” said Statsig CEO Vijaye Raji, a former Microsoft and Facebook engineering leader, explaining that it was important for the company to maintain an open floor plan to ensure a “collaborative and high energy environment.”

In an accommodation for its in-person workforce, Statsig opted to keep its headquarters on the Interstate 90 corridor to ensure that employee commuting habits wouldn’t be disrupted. The new headquarters are a short drive across a freeway overpass from its prior space. 

The company is considering running its own shuttle to a nearby park-and-ride to help employees commute, a nod to the company’s growth, and a way to reduce traffic congestion in the area.

With about 145 employees, Statsig is on track to reach 200 by the end of the year. The company is #5 on the GeekWire 200 index of top Pacific Northwest startups.

Statsig raised a $100 million Series C round in May, led by ICONIQ Growth with participation from Sequoia and Madrona. It had $40 million in annual recurring revenue at the time.

CrowdStrike is moving into new office space in Redmond, Wash., the cybersecurity software company confirmed on Wednesday.

The company is subleasing 34,873 square feet at Studio 7500, a single tenant office building at 7500 166th Ave. NE., according to figures in Broderick Group’s Eastside Office Market Report for the second quarter.

“Washington state is an important part of CrowdStrike’s business and our office there serves as a strategic technology hub supporting Engineering Operations and Sales & Customer Support, complementing other major development centers across the company’s global footprint,” a spokesperson for Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike told GeekWire.

The company, which employs roughly 10,000 people globally, does not break out headcount by region. The spokesperson said employees will use the new Redmond office as needed, in support of a “remote friendly environment.”

CrowdStrike previously occupied space in Kirkland, Wash.

The Studio 7500 space was previously occupied by Volkswagen, according to Broderick Group.

CrowdStrike announced plans in May to lay off 500 employees. Founder and CEO George Kurtz wrote at the time that the company was evolving how it operates as AI was “reshaping every industry.”

Last year, a flawed update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon cybersecurity platform affected 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices, impacting airlines and other enterprise businesses in an extraordinary global IT outage.

Engineering outposts

• Dozens of companies from outside the area have established offices in the Seattle area. Track them using this GeekWire list.

Rocket Companies completed its acquisition of Redfin on Tuesday, bringing together the nation’s largest mortgage lender with the tech-enabled Seattle real estate brokerage.

The $1.75 billion deal was first announced in March.

The companies unveiled one of the first perks of the new partnership — a program called Rocket Preferred Pricing, which incentivizes homebuyers who use a Redfin agent to also finance through Rocket Mortgage. Buyers can choose between a 1% lower interest rate for the first year or up to $6,000 in lender credits from Rocket Mortgage.

The pricing model is also available to buyers who purchase a Redfin-listed home and finance through Rocket Mortgage.

Redfin said in a news release that together with Rocket it’s “building a one-stop-shop for homeownership,” with AI-powered services and plans to offer additional products for homebuyers, homeowners, real estate agents and mortgage brokers in the months ahead.

Redfin’s branding has been updated on its website to add “Powered by Rocket.”

Redfin, led by CEO Glenn Kelman, launched in 2004 and went public in 2017 in a deal that valued the company at $1.73 billion.

Detroit-based Rocket Companies went public in 2020. In addition to mortgage lending products, Rocket also sells personal loans and other fintech offerings. Earlier this year, Rocket acquired mortgage lender Mr. Cooper Group in a $9.4 billion stock deal.

Amperity, the Seattle-based startup that helps companies collect and manage customer data, moved to a new office in downtown Seattle.

The company now occupies a full floor in the Qualtrics Tower at 2nd Avenue and University Street, and the space is designed to accommodate 125 employees who are working in-person three days per week.

The move gives Amperity 25% more square footage to support its growth, as it’s actively hiring for several key roles. The startup was previously on the 26th floor in Columbia Center on 5th Avenue.

Founded in 2016, Amperity reached a billion-dollar valuation in 2021 after raising $100 million. The company established itself as a leader in the customer data platform sector, or CDP.

Amperity helps companies fine-tune marketing campaigns and understand buying habits by connecting fragmented data sources about individual customers via emails, purchase history, mobile app usage, website traffic, physical store visits, and more.

The company named Tony Alika Owens, a longtime tech exec who previously spent a decade at Salesforce, as CEO last November.

Amperity is ranked No. 43 on the GeekWire 200, our quarterly ranking of the top privately held technology startups in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

Before there was Apple, there were apples.

A 387-acre property in McMinnville, Ore., that was once home to Steve Jobs — and where he worked in an apple orchard before starting Apple — is for sale for $5 million.

Comprised of five parcels with multiple homes and outbuildings, the All One Farm was a counterculture community that is said to have profoundly influenced Jobs’ life and career, serving as the inspiration for the name of his company and as the birthplace of his daughter, Lisa.

A Windermere listing by agent Drew Staudt describes the property as a storybook estate that “could serve as a statement homestead, corporate retreat, hunting lodge, vineyard, winery, or strategic venture that taps into the history of the property.”

The farm features a fully remodeled 5,200-square-foot main house, built in 1985; a large barn with a ballroom floor, full bathroom, and outdoor kitchen next to a greenhouse; and a remodeled three-bedroom, two-bath guest house. There are territorial and mountain views and the land is a mixture of forested, cleared, and pasture areas. There is abundant wildlife for hunting, including elk, turkey, deer, bear and cougar.

There’s even a little red cabin where Jobs lived and which has been staged in the listing with vintage Apple memorabilia.

The property is 15 minutes from downtown McMinnville and just over an hour southwest of Portland.

All One Farm was owned by Marcel Muller and managed by his nephew, Robert Friedland, a future billionaire financier in the mining industry, who ran the property as a hub of Eastern philosophy, meditation, and psychedelic exploration.

Friedland met Jobs at Reed College, where he is said to have taught Jobs the “reality distortion field” leadership style. Jobs dropped out of Reed after one semester, and credited his experience on LSD while on the farm with expanding his creative vision.

While visiting and living at the farm in the early 1970s, Jobs worked at Atari as a technician alongside Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Inspired by his work in the orchard and a fruitarian diet, Jobs suggested the name “Apple Computer” while brainstorming with Wozniak on potential names for their new company. Jobs wanted a name that was “fun, spirited, and not intimidating” like other tech company names, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography, “Steve Jobs.”

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

After relentlessly defending “seller choice,” Compass has filed suit against Zillow over private listings, with CEO Robert Reffkin claiming that the home search site is “abusing its monopoly power to ban homeowners and their agents” for marketing homes elsewhere.

The suit, filed in New York on Monday morning, is a response to Zillow’s policy barring listings that are publicly marketed but not widely available via the MLS. It was first reported by The New York Times.

What the lawsuit says: The suit calls Zillow “the vital, go-to destination for consumers looking to purchase homes,” a status achieved through “relentless acquisition of competitors” and “the power of network effects.” 

Compass’ “3-Phased Marketing Strategy,” meanwhile, poses “a significant threat to Zillow’s home search monopoly” by allowing consumers to sell their homes via private listing, free of “negative insights” such as days on market, the filing states.

The lawsuit also accuses Zillow of charging “an incremental tax on the real estate transaction” by redirecting the buyer “away from the listing agent of the property, who would not charge the buyer an incremental commission.”

An escalating battle: Reffkin’s push for private exclusives has escalated across the country, including in Seattle against leading local brokerage Windermere and NWMLS, which serves the region and was slapped with a lawsuit by Compass in April; in California against CRMLS, which has opted out of allowing a pre-marketing period; and more recently, in Chicago where the leaders of recently acquired @properties are echoing Reffkin’s “seller choice” message. 

A closer look at the policy: As of May 28, agents who have listings that are deemed to be out of compliance with Zillow’s listings standards will get a notification from the company. Starting June 30, “an agent’s third non-compliant listing — and any subsequent non-compliant listings — will be blocked from Zillow and Trulia for the life of the listing agreement between that listing broker and seller,” the company said.

“Our belief is that, if a listing is going to be marketed to a buyer or a subset of buyers, it really needs to be made available to all buyers,” Errol Samuelson, Zillow’s chief industry development officer, told Real Estate News in April.

How others in the industry have reacted to the listings ban: eXp and others have expressed support for Zillow’s listing ban, while Homes.com says it will boost listings that Zillow won’t display.

A recent survey of MLS and Realtor association leaders took a look at the bigger picture, revealing concerns about how NAR has handled the decision to add a delayed marketing option to the Clear Cooperation policy.

Most respondents (54%) disapproved of NAR’s actions, with 20.7% approving and 21.7% offering no opinion. Some expressed frustration with “rushed, vague” communications from NAR. Others viewed it as politically and legally sensible.

Seattle-based MoxiWorks is doubling down on its sales and marketing solutions and selling off MoxiBalance, a back-office accounting product used by more than 150 brokerages and 20,000 agents in the U.S. and Canada. 

The buyer, Vero, is a new division of Upfront, a financial platform for franchisors, brokers and agents. MoxiBalance will be rebranded as Vero. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Eric Elfman, the disruption-minded CEO of MoxiWorks, said the move reflects the company’s evolution from “a leading legacy software provider into the go-to real estate sales and marketing platform, empowering agents to find, win, and close more deals.”

MoxiBalance GM Ishtyaq Ahmed is joining Upfront as chief product officer.

“We’re thrilled to bring modern finance and innovation to the back-office space. MoxiBalance is a great platform, and we are excited to add Ish and his 10 years of back-office experience to our team in this deal,” said Upfront Co-founder and CEO Mukund (Muk) Venkatakrishnan.

The two companies said in a statement that they will continue to integrate their software and that customers should not experience any disruptions.

Redfin on Tuesday announced its last quarterly earnings results as an independent company, with its acquisition by mortgage giant Rocket to be finalized later this summer. 

The Seattle-based brokerage and home search portal saw a decline in most major metrics compared to the previous quarter, including a drop in revenue and transactions, and increasing net losses stemming largely from its real estate services division and corporate overhead. The rentals and title divisions were profitable. 

Due to its pending acquisition, Redfin did not host an investor call, but its earnings release highlighted some recent wins. The company saw an increase in loyalty transactions, noting that 40% of sales came from loyalty customers during the first quarter — a significant amount of its total business. The brokerage also noted big gains in agent count. The number of lead agents was up 32% year-over-year, reaching 2,265 by the end of March.

What Redfin had to say 

In a press release, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said the rise in lead agents was “thanks to our new plan to pay agents entirely on commission.” That plan — Redfin Next — rolled out nationwide in October. 

The acquisition news, Kelman said, also gave the company a boost. 

“Since the March 10th announcement of Redfin’s agreement to be bought by Rocket, many Redfin employees, from agents to engineers, have been over the moon about Rocket’s vision of a home-ownership platform. We can’t wait to join Rocket and build the future of homeownership,” he said.

Key numbers

Revenue: $221 million, which was down from $244.3 million reported in the previous quarter but off by just 2% from the $225.5 million reported in the first quarter of 2024. 

Cash and cash equivalents: $183.5 million cash on hand at the end of the quarter, up from $124.7 million at the end of 2024. 

Net income/loss: Net loss of $92.5 million, which was higher than the net loss of $66.8 million reported a year ago and more than double the $36.4 net loss from Q4 2024.

Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before income, taxes, depreciation and amortization): A loss of $32 million for Q1 2025 compared to a loss of $27.6 million in Q1 2024.

Average number of lead agents: An average of 2,190 lead agents throughout the quarter and 2,265 lead agents at the end of March 2025, a 32% gain year-over-year. 

Transactions: 12,255 total transactions between brokerage and partner deals in the first quarter, which was down from 14,363 in the previous quarter but close to the 12,730 transactions from Q1 2024.  

Site traffic: 46 million monthly average visitors, down slightly compared to 49 million the first quarter of 2024 but an increase from the reported 43 million average monthly users in Q4 2024. 

Notable moves

The company’s pending acquisition was the big news of the quarter, but earlier in the year, Redfin also announced a rentals deal with Zillow.

Per the terms of the partnership, Zillow agreed to pay Redfin $100 million to be the exclusive provider of multifamily rental listings on Redfin and its owned rental sites, Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com.

While Redfin’s real estate and mortgage business reported net losses in Q1, rentals was in the black with a net profit of $3.6 million.