Jeremy Wacksman

I'm glad you asked that question because that is, we get asked about rates so often and the demand side, but the affordability crisis is an availability problem.

And that's the problem.

The US, Zillow estimates, is nearly 5 million homes underbuilt.

We just, coming out of the global financial crisis back in 2008, 2009, which many folks listening I would think would remember,

We stopped building enough houses to keep up with new household formation, and we definitely stopped building affordable homes.

And so we have this accumulated deficit of supply.

That was a problem.

That has been a problem.

That is now exacerbated by the mortgage rate lock you talked about.

So you need more new construction to help balance the market.

But you also need existing home sales to come on and folks to say, well, I will trade out of my 2%, 3% mortgage because I need to or because rates have come down or because enough time has gone by.

So you need both those things, but it is a supply problem.

And there are places in the country that are starting to make progress, but it's very marginal progress, and we have a long way to go.

Having a small percentage of a number that is flat allows Zillow to grow and gain share even when the market is depressed.

That's kind of a short version of how we think about it internally.

Despite...

being a brand that is so well-known and 60, 70 percent of all home buyers are on Zillow in any given month or quarter, our transaction share as best we can measure it, and there's ways we have more so than others, is single digits.

The number of times a buyer and seller moves from using us as a shopping and dreaming site to hiring one of our agents, using one of our loan officers, using the software to help sell and list their home, and then we participate with the agent.

That's single digit.

And so you're right.