IPOs are making headlines again, which could mean Pat Healy's hopes for "hot and heavy" activity this year may not be completely quashed after all.

Healy is the founder and CEO of Issuer Network, which helps C-suite executives leading IPOs get multimillion-dollar marketing packages from prospective stock exchanges through "bake-off" bidding competitions. For the last 30 years, he's worked behind the scenes on some of the biggest IPOs and corporate spin-offs, including Facebook, Zillow, KraftHeinz, and 3M.

He's won praise from clients such as Jason Child, the CFO of the semiconductor company Arm (and the former CFO of Splunk), and Dick Grasso, a former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, who sat on opposite the deal table from Healy when he first started Issuer Network in 1995.

He's helped clients get everything from free advertising at Davos to NFL players attending their closing bell ceremonies.

Never heard of him? There's a reason for that. Healy, who appears to be a forefather of this type of bake-off, or contest between companies, runs his business largely by word of mouth. He also refuses to spend a dime on marketing. Just take a look at the company's website — the very picture of a mid-2000s web interface.

"I could make a big deal about some of these things, but that's not who I am," Healy, 74, told Business Insider in an interview. "I believe I do a really good job for people, and I shouldn't go around bragging about it. I just let my customers do the talking."

With IPOs back in the spotlight, thanks to the fintechs Chime and eToro, BI sat down with Healy and spoke to people who have worked with him. We wanted to understand the business and the man behind it, including how he got his start, how an exchange bake-off works, and what he's been occupied with since public offerings took a nosedive in 2022.

IPO activity has whipsawed this year with Trump's tariffs, and Healy saw several of the offerings in his docket pulled due to market volatility. Where things go next is anyone's guess, but Healy is bracing for a potential torrent of demand.

"Who knows when the sun's going to come out?" Healy said. "When it does, I expect all these guys to put their foot on the gas and come to market right away."

In the early '90s, after having held multiple CFO roles at DC-area banks, Healy started doing consulting work for Nasdaq. His job, he explained, was to disincentivize companies from leaving for the NYSE at a time when Nasdaq was a lesser-known exchange for new companies.

"I designed and helped build products that were useful to CFOs so that if they decided to leave Nasdaq, they'd have to give something up," he said. "They'd be less inclined to do so. And it created a stickiness."

That opened Healy's eyes to what he called an unfilled gap. Investment bankers advising on IPOs don't want to get caught in the crossfire between the exchanges, he said (and many banks are themselves listed in the NYSE). There are other professionals who help companies get listed on an exchange, including business consultants, but Healy's appears to have been the first to specialize in this competitive process for marketing perks.

"I discovered that CFOs really didn't have anybody to talk to when they had to make a decision about where they're going to list their stock," he said.

"There was no one else doing it. And there's still no one else doing it," he added.

Issuer Network's first client was AOL, the now (mostly) defunct internet and instant messaging service. Healy said he managed to get a meeting with the CFO and convinced him to let Healy negotiate a "co-branding package" on the company's behalf.

"I just hopped in my car and went over to Tyson's Corner," a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, where AOL was headquartered at the time. "I visited with the CFO. I said, 'Look, you're on the wrong exchange here.'"

In August 1996, AOL switched from the Nasdaq to the NYSE.

AOL was an example of a service Healy refers to as "switches." Today, most of his business involves advising companies about to go public on which exchange they should be listed. Beyond the trading style and fit of a given exchange, there are hidden levers that companies ccan pull, said Healy.

"Issuers are always focused on the listing fee," he said. "What they don't see is what the exchange is going to make off the listing."

Exchanges cannot technically buy a company's listing, but they can pick up the tab for co-branded advertisements or other marketing perks. That's where Healy comes in. He essentially creates a competition between the exchanges to see which one can offer clients the best package with their listing.

"We create pretty substantial co-branding packages and we literally bake it off," he said.

Typically, a company would contact the exchanges to say it's decided to make its listing decision "a competitive process." Then, Healy said, the company would lay out how it wants to reach customers, and the exchanges would come back with "a co-branding package commensurate with those defined outcomes." From there, it's a back-and-forth of negotiations and adjustments until the company (not Healy, as he emphasized) names a winner. The whole process typically takes about six weeks.

Healy wouldn't reveal how much these deals are worth — except for one, which is public. The package he got for Arm, a semiconductor company that went public in 2023, was worth $50 million.

"He understands exactly what the terms and conditions are for the market," Child, Arm's CFO, said. "So he can help you understand, as the issuing company, what is the benefit to the exchange? What is the value they can provide? What are the pros and cons?"

Child first hired Healy when he was Groupon's CFO for the tech company's 2011 IPO. He tapped Healy again in 2023 when Arm went public.

Arm's package with Nasdaq, for example, included several years of advertising at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland. As part of its deal, another Healy client, PNC, got NFL Hall of Famers, including Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith, to ring the closing bell at the NYSE with company employees in 2010.

There are moments when both sides are unhappy, said Healy, but it's all business — nothing personal.

"I maintain very good relationships with both exchanges," he said. "We have no agenda here other than the best deal for our client. And we don't favor anybody. The minute we do, we lose all credibility and we're out of business."

Of the IPOs that happened during the early days of Healy's business, only a small percentage of his clients were large enough to be eligible for the NYSE. Those that were crossed Grasso's desk, the former NYSE chief told BI.

"Some of my marketing people, in the early days of Pat's business, were highly skeptical," said Grasso, who headed the exchange from 1995 to 2003. "But after a couple of sit-downs with me, I was very comfortable that Pat was going to be fair."

Healy also advises clients on what he refers to as "spins," when a company spins off a part of its business into its own company. Issuer Network has worked on more of these during the recent IPO downturn.

"You've got Comcast spinning, Honeywell spinning, FedEx spinning. You've got quite a lineup of spins out there," he said. "We've done a lot of spins in our day, and we expect to be active in the spin market here for the foreseeable future — through the summer, at least. A lot of these deals will bleed into '26, but their exchange selection decision I expect will be made in '25."

Healy said he couldn't disclose current clients, but noted he worked on a spin with 3M last year. He advised the company as it spun off its healthcare business, now called Solventum, and led a bake-off between exchanges for both the parent and spin company at the same time.

"The winner takes all," Healy said. "So instead of getting a $5 or $10 million co-branding package for 'Spinco,' you get many times that amount for the whole enchilada."

(3M stayed with the NYSE, and Solventum joined its listings.)

Healy declined to discuss his fees, but said he follows a "satisfaction guarantee" policy: He tells clients they can "tear up our invoice" if they aren't happy — something of an anomaly on Wall Street.

Child called Healy "an old soul."

"He basically just tells you, 'Pay me what you think it's worth' when it's over," Child said. "It's like the opposite of dealing with an enterprise software person."

Healy's humble upbringing might explain his aversion to the spotlight. Growing up, he was one of nine children. His father was a mailman in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park. The town was home to a Ford manufacturing plant, what Healy described as "an ugly scene" — not necessarily the kind of place you might expect someone who brokers deals on Wall Street for some of the largest corporations in the world to get their start.

"I'm just a hick from Ohio," Healy said. "People like talking to me. And I have something good to offer them. You build a momentum over time by just keeping your nose to the grindstone, delivering good results, and just shooting straight with people."

• In 2021, Florida resident Shannon Moore sold her $2 million real estate portfolio.
• Moore then bought an 11.5-acre campground in a small North Carolina town for $290,000.
• She opened a tiny home vacation park. Although business is slow, she's confident in her choice.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shannon Moore, 52, the owner of the Magical Mountain Resorts, a tiny home vacation rental village in Hayesville, North Carolina. Hayesville is a small town about five hours west of Raleigh and around three hours northeast of Atlanta. The conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

I lived in Florida my whole life. But after I divorced and turned 50, I just got tired of it — call it a midlife crisis.

I had been a real-estate agent in Florida for 20 years and built a portfolio of three duplexes and two small homes. But over the years, the cost of insurance and maintaining the rental properties had greatly increased. I started to think, "Maybe it's time to cash out."

In 2021, I sold my real-estate portfolio for about $2 million. I wanted to use that money to buy a campground or a property with little cabins somewhere in the mountains, like Tennessee or the Carolinas.

That's when I found a listing on Zillow — a Hayesville, North Carolina property. It was 11 and a half acres, and on the market for $290,000. It came with five tiny cabins, a larger house, a pavilion, and 20 RV slots.

All the cabins looked like they would fall. A friend who works in real estate flew to Hayesville to check out the property with me. He was like, "Do not do it." He said, "This place just needs to be torn down. It's a shithole."

But I had my own plan. I bought the property in November 2021 and moved in soon after.

I followed my dreams of building a tiny-home park

I decided to turn the property into a tiny-home park for vacation rentals.

I had money left over from selling my real-estate portfolio and used every dime to rehab the Hayesville property.

The campground wasn't operational when I bought it — it hadn't been for about 15 years. I had to install new sewer lines, gravel roads throughout the park, and new plumbing and electrical systems. I also gutted the five existing cabins on the property and added new appliances, furniture, and decor to each one.

I designed a Florida-themed camper for myself to live in, and brought in two tiny homes on wheels. One is a double-decker bus from southern England, and the other is a small, tiny house on a trailer. So, I have seven rentable units on the property.

When styling the village, I wanted it to be something unique. I didn't want "black bear cabins" with rustic furniture and bear blankets on the couch.

I wanted something whimsical and cool, so I decided on a fairy-tale village.

My tiny village is one of a kind

Before decorating the cabins, I researched copyrights because I didn't want to get a letter from Disney or Warner Bros.

I discovered that Lewis Carroll's original "Alice in Wonderland" is in the public domain, meaning there are no copyrights. That means I could use imagery inspired by it, like mushrooms, rabbits, and the Queen of Hearts.

I have two cabins at the front of the property that are "Alice in Wonderland"-themed. One is Alice's White Bunny Cottage, painted pink and blue. Outside, mushrooms and flowers light up with solar-powered lights, and you'll find little hedgehogs, mushrooms, and tiny keys scattered throughout the flower beds.

There's also a Harry Potter-themed cabin called The Caretaker's Cabin — renamed for copyright reasons — and a double-decker bus called The Midnight Bus, which resembles the Knight Bus from the series.

I also have a Snow White Cabin, one of the tiny homes on wheels. It's a white cottage decorated with baskets of apples and red poppies.

Then two Candyland-themed cabins look like gingerbread houses, with frosting dripping off the roofs.

Over 250 local and international artists have contributed to the property's artworks or furnishings. The doors for the "Alice in Wonderland" and Candyland cabins were hand-carved in Turkey.

My visitors come from all walks of life

The village opened to visitors in March 2023. I often run promotions, and right now, I'm offering a rate of $99 per night.

My guests are typically grandparents traveling with their grandchildren, nuclear families, university groups, bachelorette parties, anniversaries, and birthday celebrations.

Disney, Warner Bros., and Harry Potter fans also frequently visit — it's a fun and diverse crowd.

Honestly, business can be pretty up and down. Sales tend to slow in September when kids return to school, and again during the winter months when it gets colder, but things usually pick back up in the spring and summer.

I did well from March through August last year, but when Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina, no one came, even though my property didn't suffer any damage.

Business is currently down because people are worried about the economy. However, it's starting to pick back up — I was almost fully booked for March and April.

I haven't made a profit, but I'm hopeful business will pick up

I haven't made a profit compared to how much I've invested in the property.

Electricity costs me about $1,700 a month on average. Thankfully, water is free since I have a fresh spring well flowing from a nearby mountain. But there are always extra expenses — for example, I'm currently redoing the roads, a $10,000 project.

After covering the bills, I usually reinvest any remaining revenue into the property. I've added many amenities to make the village more appealing to visitors. In August, I built a large barn with a fenced area and brought in two miniature horses, a donkey, three Nigerian dwarf goats, two Kunekune pigs, and two Patagonian cavies.

I also created a massive fairy garden, which cost about $5,000 to build, and I refurbish it every few months.

Despite everything, I feel like I'm building both a dream and my retirement, and who wouldn't be happy about that?

I live on a beautiful property. The front borders a certified trout creek, and the back connects to the Nantahala Forest. I lived on the beach for 50 years, which was great, but I wanted a different vibe — new scenery, a fresh experience. Now, I live in a cute, quaint little town.

Sure, I could've taken the $2 million and put it into stocks or a 401(k), and just lived off the returns. But for me, creating a place where families can make memories is far more meaningful. Some guests come back two, three, or even four times — and you can't put a price on that.

• The typical starter home costs at least $1 million in 233 US cities, a Zillow study found.
• Just five years ago, only 85 cities had starter homes that cost at least $1 million.
• It's a telling sign of how pricey homes are, even in areas once considered relatively affordable.

The typical price of a starter home was $1 million or higher in 233 US cities last month, a new report from Zillow found.

To define starter home prices, Zillow looked at estimated home values toward the bottom of the market in each city, between the 5th and 35th percentiles for each area.

The real-estate listings site found that the typical price of starter homes in at least one city in half of all US states reached $1 million or higher.

The typical price for a starter home nationally stood at $192,514 — well under $1 million. However, the Zillow data shows just how expensive homes have become since 2020, including in states like Rhode Island and Minnesota that aren't historically known for ultra-pricey real estate. Five years ago, only 85 cities had typical starter homes costing $1 million and up.

California led Zillow's 2025 list of places with the most expensive starter homes, with 113 cities where the typical one is $1 million or higher. New York, with 32 cities, and New Jersey, with 20, followed.

In fact, eight California cities made the top 15 most expensive cities for starter homes, with the typical price exceeding $3 million. Four cities in Washington, all located in the Seattle metropolitan area, also made the top 15.

Jupiter Island, Florida, where celebrities like Bill Gates and Tiger Woods have owned waterfront mansions, took the top spot overall, with a staggering $5,850,442 typical price for a starter home in March 2025.

Two new states joined the list this year: Rhode Island and Minnesota. New Shoreham, Rhode Island, the main town on Block Island, a popular summer destination, and Minnetonka Beach, Minnesota, a lakeside suburb of Minneapolis, reached the $1 million starter-home milestone.

Relatively expensive homes put many homebuyers in tough spots

Homeownership can feel frustratingly out of reach for anyone, but first-time homebuyers are particularly squeezed.

In 2024, the National Association of Realtors found that the median age of a first-time homebuyer hit an all-time high of 38. At the same time, first-time homebuyers made up only 24% of all transactions, a record low.

The median sales price of a US home in the US has risen by 42.5% in the past five years, according to real-estate site Redfin, from $302,487 in March 2020 to $431,078 in March 2025.

Mortgage rates are also relatively high, which makes borrowing money more difficult. Rising homeowners' insurance rates nationwide and increasingly pricey homeowners' association, or HOA, fees are additional costs that make homebuying even more expensive.

Increasing costs can lead potential buyers, like Virginia resident Lawrence Talej, to delay homebuying plans. Talej was in contract for a $315,000 house in 2019, but pulled out when maintenance issues arose. Four years later, the median price for a home in his suburb of Richmond jumped more than $100,000, according to Zillow, causing him to put his plans on hold.

"We're royally screwed," he told BI at the time.

Some people even feel their six-figure incomes aren't enough to comfortably purchase a home.

Last year, tech worker Madelyn Driver and her husband set out with a $700,000 budget and remote-work flexibility, looking at houses from Colorado to Pennsylvania. They told BI that finding a home that fit their budget and broad location preferences felt impossible.

"We're finding that even in a vast country like the US, housing options that align with our desires for green spaces, a somewhat metropolitan vibe, and cultural vibrancy are surprisingly out of budget," Driver said. In June 2024, Driver said they would keep looking for another year and then re-evaluate their search.

Even for the lucky ones who do manage to buy a home, it's not always smooth sailing.

First-time homebuyer Elsa said she felt pressure to buy a home in 2022, before she was ready. She and her husband purchased a $975,000 home in a Washington, DC, suburb, taking on credit card debt to keep up with the mortgage and other costs that cropped up.

"We definitely didn't anticipate having as many repair expenses. The house we bought is older, so we have been overwhelmed with repairs like multiple water leaks," she told BI.

Thousands of real estate agents across the US opened their email Saturday night to find an unexpected message from Andy Florance, the CEO of CoStar Group and Homes.com. As the top executive for one of real estate's largest search websites, Florance had a lot on his mind. For months, the industry has been embroiled in a fight over "exclusive inventory" — homes marketed for sale by real estate agents but purposely kept off public search portals like Homes.com or Realtor.com. Florance wasn't writing to complain about this practice, though. He'd set his sights on another target: his company's chief rival, Zillow.

Two days earlier, Zillow had unveiled a new rule threatening to blacklist scores of homes from its well-trafficked website. The surprise announcement took direct aim at exclusive inventory, also known as secret or hidden home listings. A growing number of agents at large brokerages, most notably the national power player Compass, had been hoarding listings and testing the waters by advertising them on their own websites before sharing the homes widely across the internet. Zillow said it would permanently ban from its site any listing that had gone through this preview period. If you're going to market a home somewhere, the company argued, you have to market it everywhere.

Zillow, by far the most popular destination for online home shoppers, framed the move as a defense of consumers: "Fragmented listing access — in which a home is available on one platform but not another, or shared with some agents but not others — creates frustration and distrust," the company said in its announcement. But Florance wasn't having it. He lambasted Zillow's new rule as "an incredible move of audacity and a pure power play of epic proportions." Homes.com, Florance told the agents, would happily welcome any listings scorned by Zillow.

This is the messy state of play in real estate: With sales stuck in a protracted malaise, agent commissions under pressure, and the rules of the game in flux, everyone is scrambling to protect their share of the homebuying pie. Zillow's declaration adds yet another twist, marking an explosive turning point in the long-simmering dispute over exclusive inventory and hidden home listings. The company is flexing its considerable muscle, presenting agents with a daunting choice: Either share your listing with Zillow and everyone else as soon as you so much as stake a sign in the front yard, or explain to your client why their home will never appear on the website that's become synonymous with real estate.

"That's the spark," says Mike DelPrete, a tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. "And now everybody, whether they like it or not, they have to have a position. They have to make some decisions, and they need to act."

Many agents don't bother with exclusive inventory. As soon as they agree to market a home on behalf of a seller, they add it to the multiple listing service, or MLS, a local database that shares the information with other agents, brokerages, and big search portals like Zillow. Once a listing is live in the MLS, it's pretty much everywhere.

But agents have other options that are growing more popular. They can quietly shop a home around to other agents within their brokerage, a practice known as "office exclusives." These are shared via email, word of mouth, or internal listing platforms, so the homes don't actually pop up on the internet for casual browsers to see. Another option is to add the listing to the MLS and advertise the home publicly on the brokerage's website but opt out of the data feeds that share listings with other websites that display homes, including other brokerages and search portals like Zillow. In both instances, a brokerage like Compass, the largest in the country by sales volume, can lure agents and clients with early access to homes they can't find anywhere else. There's been a lot of debate over whether this is actually good for the seller, but the financial upside for the brokerage is enormous.

It's easy to get bogged down in the details of how this all works, and it remains to be seen how Zillow will actually implement these changes. But the spirit of Zillow's new rule, spelled out in last week's announcement, is pretty simple: "If a listing is online, it should be online everywhere." Redfin, another leading search portal, has taken a similar stance, saying it will also ban listings that are not shared everywhere. Both sites notably make exceptions for homes that were originally office exclusives — if a seller wants to remain truly private, they can do so within the walls of their brokerage and turn to Zillow or Redfin later. But as soon as the general public can lay eyes on a home, the broker has a day to share it with everyone through the MLS — or else. (Zillow has said that listings can be unbanned if the seller breaks up with their broker.)

Zillow's hardline stance has already mobilized support. At least two big brokerages — eXp Realty, the third-largest brokerage by sales volume, according to the consulting firm T3 Sixty, and NextHome, which has 6,000 agents nationwide — have made public commitments to abide by Zillow's policy. The Consumer Policy Center, a new nonpartisan think tank, has also come out in support of the new rule.

"We encourage all brokers to support Zillow's efforts to maintain the transparency of real estate markets and prevent their balkanization," Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at CPC and a former senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, said in a statement.

But there are problems with Zillow and Redfin's position. Ironically, they could push more home listings into the shadows by encouraging brokerages like Compass to pursue "office exclusives" rather than sharing homes publicly on the Compass website. They also risk appearing power-hungry and desperate to preserve their web traffic (and bottom lines) at all costs.

"It's not the flex they think it is," says Amanda Orson, the founder and CEO of Galleon, an alternative marketplace that connects homebuyers and sellers directly. "It's a tell. Zillow realized that not having all of the inventory available is their Achilles' heel, and they just telegraphed it."

Glenn Kelman, Redfin's CEO, doesn't see it that way. The search portals, like the MLS, track how long a house has been on the market and whether the seller has dropped the price — data points that end up harming sellers, in Compass CEO Robert Reffkin's telling. If that's the issue, Kelman says he's fine with dropping that info entirely. Redfin has called on MLSes to create an option that would allow agents to share listings while preventing websites from showing price drops and days on market, which Kelman describes as a middle ground. The most important thing, he says, is for consumers to be able to see all the homes no matter which website they visit.

"You shouldn't have to go to 10 different websites to see 10 different sets of inventory," Kelman tells me. "That will be a challenge for consumers."

Here's one thing I'm sure of: This is a mess. There are more than 500 MLSes around the country, each with its own policies and enforcement mechanisms. Compass appears unlikely to back down from exclusive inventory, setting up more battles down the line. In an email to Compass agents the day after Zillow's announcement, Reffkin advised agents to "keep doing what you're doing."

"This moment goes beyond a policy — it's about control versus choice," Reffkin wrote.

For the average American trying to hop into the housing market, the new battle will likely only cause confusion and frustration. Sellers may not know what they're agreeing to when they opt for a limited advertising campaign, or they may turn litigious when they realize their homes have been blacklisted from Zillow. Buyers may be forced to scour a range of websites to get an idea of what's out there, and even then, they could risk overlooking their dream home. Even real estate executives are confused about some of this stuff — now imagine the reaction of a typical buyer or seller, who goes through this kind of transaction only a handful of times in their lives.

When confusion runs rampant among regular consumers — when the very rules of the game are unclear — that's usually a sign that government intervention could be on the way.

"As much as many of us wouldn't like that to happen, it's kind of getting set up to where it could happen," Saul Klein, a longtime real estate executive and the CEO of the San Diego MLS, tells me. "And so I think we've got to be real careful and work not to keep confusing the marketplace."

Indeed, Andy Florance's email to agents over the weekend included a postscript with a link to contact the Department of Justice. But government action is hardly guaranteed, and it could be years before anything happens. In the interim, expect the fight to get uglier.

"There is something larger at stake than just who gets control of the inventory," Kelman tells me. "It's the US housing market, and we're supposed to all be at an age where we actually care about that. And I think everybody does, but emotions are just running high right now."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

• Zillow said it's banning listings that are initially selectively marketed to the public.
• The policy targets the selective sharing of listings before they appear on sites like Zillow.
• Now listings that are made public must be widely shared within a day in order to appear on Zillow.

Zillow announced a new policy Wednesday that it said was motivated by one principle: "A listing marketed to any buyer should be marketed to every buyer."

Under the company's new listing access standards, homes that are listed for sale but only to a limited group — or not made visible to all potential buyers via the common channels — will not be allowed to appear on Zillow.

The policy is a response to a push by some real estate brokerages to selectively share their listings, rather then make them widely visible from the jump, such as on sites like Zillow or Redfin, as Business Insider's James Rodriguez reported Wednesday.

For instance, Compass, the largest real estate brokerage in the US by sales volume, uses a marketing strategy that includes listing properties on a "Coming Soon" page before listing them more widely on sites like Zillow.

Zillow's new policy means that in order for a listing to ever appear on the site, it needs to be submitted to a local database of homes for sale called a Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, and published on sites like Zillow within a day of being initially marketed, on a brokerage's own site, on social media, or via a yard sign.

"Our standards are straightforward: If a listing is marketed directly to consumers without being listed on the MLS and made widely available where buyers search for homes, it will not be published on Zillow," the company's statement said.

Zillow also said the practice of selectively sharing listings hurts consumers and creates confusion in the marketplace.

"It's a bait-and-switch move, where agents or brokerages try to get the best of both worlds — dangling a listing to gain more business, only to turn around and market it widely later," the statement said, adding: "Consumers should not have to wonder whether the home that might be perfect for them is hidden behind a gate they didn't know existed."

To anyone snooping on Zillow, it appears that the two-bedroom condo at 364 Arkansas Street, in San Francisco's sunny Potrero Hill neighborhood, is not for sale. The site can only offer a hazy estimate of the home's value, basic facts about the property, and some grainy, decade-old photos from the last time it traded hands. Other popular home-listing portals — Redfin, Realtor.com, Homes.com — deliver the same result. The house is "off-market."

The condo is for sale, though, with an asking price of $999,000. I know this because I visited the website of Compass, the country's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume and the firm representing the home's seller. There, 364 Arkansas Street is tucked away from the rest of the internet, along with a vast trove of other homes listed for sale by Compass agents.

This is no accident or failure on the part of the seller's broker. Zillow and its competitors made their names by compiling home listings in one place, helping regular homebuyers navigate a once opaque market. But a monthslong fight over control of these listings, led by Compass CEO Robert Reffkin, is fracturing the housing landscape. A growing number of agents, especially those affiliated with Compass, are advising sellers to opt for a more limited advertising campaign for their homes. In some cases, this means an early release on the broker's website before sharing the listing more widely across the internet, essentially testing the waters before it technically hits the market. In other instances, agents may push their sellers to hide their homes from public view entirely, marketing them exclusively among agents who belong to the same brokerage, or within select groups of brokers known as "private listing networks." This state of play has spawned weird situations like the one in San Francisco: A home may be publicly touted for sale on one brokerage's website while lying dormant everywhere else.

The new reality poses the greatest threat to Zillow and other portals that subsist on an unfettered flow of data. Instead of scrolling happily through Zillow or Redfin, you might have to bounce from site to site in search of a home or hire the agent who seems like they have access to the most listings. Even then, you may be stuck with the feeling that more hidden homes are on the market, lingering just out of view.

The day of reckoning for search portals like Zillow is a long way off. Still, there's no denying the shift underway — in February, Reffkin told analysts that more than half of new Compass sellers were opting to "premarket" their homes within the walls of the brokerage before sharing their listings in all the usual places. Exclusive listings aren't novel, but Compass' aggressive push in that direction has roiled the rest of the industry. And it's far from the only company employing this tactic. Even Redfin, which runs a brokerage business in addition to its search portal, has threatened to adopt the Compass playbook.

"Writing blog posts and being all high and mighty and idealistic about how a marketplace ought to work, that's one approach," Glenn Kelman, Redfin's CEO, tells me. "And the other approach is a little more Hobbesian, which is, when you're punched in the face, punch back."

The threat to real estate portals — not to mention the house hunters and casual lurkers who love to browse them — became clear late last month. For the past half-decade, the National Association of Realtors, an industry group that effectively sets the rules for buying and selling homes in America, has been trying to stem the rise of "pocket listings," homes that are quietly advertised among a select group rather than shared widely. In 2019, NAR adopted the "clear cooperation policy," which requires agents to contribute listings to local databases within one day of marketing them publicly. The databases, known as multiple listing services, feed that info to other brokerages and search sites like Zillow, ensuring everyone can get a clear view of the homes for sale in that area. Over the past year, though, Reffkin has led the charge to get rid of the clear cooperation rule, arguing home sellers should have control over where and how their homes are marketed.

After months of debate, NAR said in late March that it would hold firm — sort of. While clear cooperation remains intact, the group also unveiled a new policy that will allow sellers to list homes on the MLS but opt out of sending their data to sites like Zillow for a period of time. These so-called "delayed marketing" listings will be available for other agents to find in the MLS and may be publicly advertised on the listing broker's website, but they'll be missing from the data feeds that send listings to the rest of the internet. And because regular buyers rarely have access to their local MLSes, they could end up relying more on agents to show them what's out there. All of this may sound nonsensical (why not get your home in front of as many people as possible?), but sellers and their agents have various reasons for slow-rolling their listings.

To get an idea of how this works in practice, take a look at Compass' proposed "three-phased marketing strategy" for sellers. The first step is to debut the home in Compass' internal database as a Private Exclusive, available only to Compass' network 34,000 agents and their "millions of clients." Unlike the MLS or a search portal like Zillow, the Compass database doesn't show whether the price has been cut or how long the house has been on the market, details that Reffkin argues can harm a seller by giving buyers more negotiating power. The next phase is what's known as a Coming Soon: The house is listed in the MLS and launched publicly on Compass.com, but isn't sent anywhere else. (That San Francisco condo I mentioned earlier is at this stage.) Some agents outside the brokerage may see it in the MLS, but again, the Compass site doesn't show price drops or days on the market. It does, however, signal that "increased competition for the listing will be coming soon when it's launched on all other sites," according to Compass. The third phase is the all-hands-on-deck approach: The listing goes live in all the typical online outlets.

Compass likens this road map to testing a product with a smaller audience before launch. A seller can tinker with the price, gauge the reception among Compass clients, and see if they can get a buyer to bite. A limited release may also appeal to sellers concerned about privacy. Reffkin and other Compass leaders have campaigned on a platform of "seller choice," the idea that a homeowner should have full control over how their home is marketed rather than surrender it to other platforms like Zillow.

"With NAR introducing a new MLS policy to 'expand choice for consumers,' they acknowledged the clear cooperation policy restricted home seller choice," Reffkin said in a statement after NAR's announcement last month. "Expanding choice means that NAR is still not letting homeowners choose precisely how to market their homes, but this is a small step in the right direction."

Those on the opposite side of the debate say most sellers just want to sell quickly for top dollar, and they argue sharing homes everywhere is the best way to achieve that. Even if a buyer offers you a dream price during that first phase in Compass' playbook, who's to say that a Zillow-fueled bidding war wouldn't deliver an even greater sum? Bret Weinstein, the founder and CEO of the Denver brokerage Guide Real Estate, says he can already envision the lawsuits from aggrieved sellers claiming they were duped into this "exclusive" marketing strategy.

"You're a few phone calls away from someone saying, 'Hey, I would have paid X amount for this house if I had known about it,'" Weinstein tells me.

Buyers, on the other hand, may miss out on their dream home if they choose the wrong agent or fail to scour every website. Buyers' agents may also be able to better justify their commissions if they can unlock a corner of the market for their clients, showing them homes they can't find anywhere else.

Both sides of the aisle may claim they're crusading on behalf of consumers, but you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in the industry arriving at this debate with a neutral point of view.

"Everybody's got a financial bias," says Mike DelPrete, a real-estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. "At the end of the day, everyone involved has a financial dog in this fight."

The lifeblood of the real estate industry is inventory: the properties listed for sale every day by ordinary homeowners. "Listings are fuel," says Stephen Capezza, a real estate consultant who's held executive roles at both Zillow and the brokerage firm Side. Search portals draw millions of visitors each month with home listings supplied by brokerages and the MLSes. The portals then make their money by turning leads — customers who signal their interest in finding an agent or getting a mortgage — into cash through a referral system. Let's say you find a home on Zillow and click the buttons to "contact agent" or "request a tour." In many cases, Zillow won't connect you with the listing agent who represents the seller. Instead, the company will pass your information along to another agent who pays for access to Zillow's user base, either by shelling out a monthly advertising fee or promising a percentage of their commission, sometimes as much as 40%. Last year, more than 70% of Zillow's revenue — about $1.6 billion — came from its referral programs and other services for real estate professionals, annual filings show. That dollar figure was up 10% from the year prior, which the company attributed to an increase in revenue per visit and the number of visits.

The free flow of listings doesn't just benefit the giant search portals. It also levels the playing field for smaller brokerages or independent agents, allowing those with limited inventory to compete with the big guys. If large brokerages exert greater control over listings, hoarding them on their own websites or shopping them around internally, they stand to gain a clear edge in the marketplace. They can convince agents to come into the fold and sway clients by touting their exclusive inventory. They can also monetize leads through their own websites rather than handing those opportunities to another search portal. Even if most of those homes eventually go public — Compass says 94% of its exclusive listings end up on the MLS — the company can still lure customers by offering them a first look. In a tight market where every day matters, that's a seductive sell.

Keeping listings in-house could lead to big bucks for mega brokers. DelPrete estimates that Compass stands to generate $3.5 million in revenue for every 100 agents recruited, $1.1 million for every 100 closed leads funneled through its website, and $570,000 for every 100 "double-ended deals," sales in which Compass agents represent both the buyer and seller. And since brokerages typically take a cut of every commission, DelPrete says the companies could use their exclusive inventory to increase the percentage their agents hand over. If Compass could claim even 1% more of its agents' commissions, the company could haul in an extra $56 million in annual profit, according to DelPrete's analysis.

"A brokerage's job is to provide value to their agents," DelPrete tells me. "Right now, Compass is providing value to agents."

There is a chance that these changes will only register as a minor disruption for Zillow and the like. Perhaps Compass can sway some sellers to pursue their premarketing strategy, but most homeowners expect their homes to end up on the big search portals because that's where the buyers are.

"I mean, shoot, there are 'SNL' skits on Zillow," Capezza tells me. "It's synonymous with real estate. It's going to take more than a great debate, a couple changes to clear cooperation, to change consumer behavior."

Zillow makes a similar argument: Just follow the consumers. For now, they're scrolling through the search portals.

"It's clear what consumers want: open access to listings when they're searching for a home and exposure to the greatest number of buyers when they're selling," Errol Samuelson, Zillow's chief industry development officer, said in an emailed statement. "Companies like Zillow that deliver for consumers — in partnership with great real estate industry professionals — will succeed, not the companies putting their own interests ahead of the needs of home buyers and sellers."

But there are also clear reasons for concern for Zillow, Redfin, and their ilk. Four years ago, DelPrete wrote a blog post outlining the biggest threats to the search portals. Exclusive inventory was No. 1. He likened the situation to the fiercely competitive world of video streaming, in which companies like Netflix and Hulu have plowed billions of dollars into exclusive content. You may turn to Max on Sunday nights for your "White Lotus" fix, but only Netflix can satisfy your "Love Is Blind" cravings. We're stuck paying for all these different platforms because each offers its own private garden of movies and shows.

"When it comes to browsing for real estate, consumers want access to all of the available inventory," DelPrete wrote. "If a certain portion of listings are held off-market, available exclusively on another platform, consumer eyeballs will naturally follow."

Just shy of 10,000 Compass listings are currently in the premarketing phases, advertised as Coming Soon or held closely as Private Exclusives. On the one hand, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of homes for sale on Zillow right now. But other large brokerages either have their own such programs or have promised to follow suit if this turns into an all-out battle for inventory. The 10 largest brands accounted for about 60% of US home sales volume last year, according to data from T3 Sixty, a consulting firm for residential real estate brokerages. If even a few lean heavily into exclusive listings, they could trigger a domino effect across the industry.

The online search portals ushered in what you might call a Golden Age of Home Search: Instead of relying on agents to guide them through the market's offerings, buyers could take matters into their own hands. It wasn't perfect. Pocket listings have always existed in some form or another, and rules encouraging cooperation among agents are notoriously difficult to enforce. But the behind-the-scenes plumbing of the MLSes gave homebuyers the ability to navigate the market with ease, comforted by the notion that they were seeing pretty much everything out there. That era may be fading.

"When you think about the future, you have to look at what's happening now," DelPrete tells me. "This is happening. It has been happening. And it's turning into a significant competitive advantage for Compass."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

Shopping for homes online once had the feel of an open-air market: crowded and sweaty, maybe, but free for anyone to drop by and see what's for sale. The experience these days, though, is quickly turning into that of a nightclub, with the hottest new listings sequestered behind velvet ropes. If you want to party with the cool kids — in this case, score access to homes before regular folks — you better know a guy.

The wide-open nature of the housing market has been breaking down for a while. Most real estate agents have traditionally taken a maximalist approach to marketing homes, sharing listings widely through local databases known as multiple listing services. Agents browse the MLS to get details on homes available for sale, while search portals like Zillow pull the data onto their own websites for regular home shoppers to scroll through. The thinking is simple: More eyes on a listing means more potential bidders, giving a homeowner the best chance of selling quickly and lucratively.

This model is even backstopped by the National Association of Realtors, a powerful industry group that sets the rules for most MLSes around the country. NAR instituted a rule in 2020 known as the clear cooperation policy, which says that once a real estate agent starts marketing a home publicly — on a website, through an email blast, or even with a "for sale" sign in the front yard — they must list it on the MLS within one day. The rule was meant to prevent freeloading and encourage participation in the MLS, keeping listings in one place for other agents and their clients to see.

In recent years, however, the clear cooperation rule has been challenged by some of the biggest players in the game, who want to act as the new bouncers for VIP rooms filled with exclusive home listings. In particular, Compass, the country's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume, wants to take charge of the aforementioned velvet rope. Compass agents are increasingly hoarding their listings internally, shunning the MLS and making homes available only to buyers who work with other Compass agents. The company's founder and CEO, Robert Reffkin, has also been crusading against the clear cooperation policy. Reffkin argues that sellers should reject the one-size-fits-all approach of the MLS and exert more control over how their home is marketed. His campaign has stoked fierce infighting among real estate agents and raised a fundamental question: Who should be able to see the homes for sale in the US?

For now, the fight is ongoing. After months of debate, NAR said Tuesday it would leave the clear cooperation policy intact while adding another rule that functions as a small concession to Compass. The apparent attempt at compromise will probably end up pleasing no one. But while clear cooperation remains in place for now, the housing market continues to hurtle toward a decidedly uncooperative future.

Those in favor of clear cooperation argue the rule is responsible for America's uniquely transparent housing market — the reason you can hop on Zillow or Realtor.com and get the lay of the land. The policy was supposed to stem the rise of so-called "pocket listings," homes marketed for sale but unavailable on the MLS. If agents stop contributing listings to the shared databases, many in the industry warn, a once unified housing market could break up into silos, with home listings distributed among clubby groups of brokers known as "private listing networks" or gatekept within brokerages like Compass.

In this world, some agents will have access to a lot more properties than others. Pick the wrong rep, and you could unknowingly miss out on your dream home. And while there are good reasons someone might not want their house touted on the MLS — a celebrity like Brad Pitt, for instance, probably doesn't want their business aired out for everyone to see — conventional wisdom says sharing a home widely is the best way to get top dollar.

"Everybody benefits when we all pool our listings, and we do so in a timely manner," Saul Klein, a longtime real estate executive who's the CEO of the San Diego Multiple Listing Service, previously told me. "And people are hurt, potentially, when we don't do that."

But it's become increasingly clear that the advocates for the open system are losing. Yes, NAR kept the clear cooperation rule in place, but it also introduced an option for privacy-conscious sellers to list on the MLS while delaying their listings from popping up on sites like Zillow or the landing pages for other brokerages. The idea is to give sellers more flexibility to market their homes as they see fit, catering to those who may prefer to "premarket" their home before blasting it out widely. The move doesn't go nearly as far as Compass would have liked, but the company still frames this as a validation of its rallying cry for more seller choice.

"With NAR introducing a new MLS policy to 'expand choice for consumers,' they acknowledged the clear cooperation policy restricted home seller choice," Reffkin said in a statement. "Expanding choice means that NAR is still not letting homeowners choose precisely how to market their homes, but this is a small step in the right direction."

Compass may not be totally happy with NAR's most recent decision, but the company has already succeeded in shaking up the real estate landscape. The brokerage has made plenty of hay by exploiting a glaring loophole in the clear cooperation rules. While an agent has to add the listing to the MLS database once they publicly put the home up for sale, the rule allows agents to share new properties within their brokerages without adding them to the MLS. This method, which Compass dubbed the "Private Exclusive" route, essentially creates a walled garden with homes that can't be found anywhere else. Compass drives traffic to its website, collects a commission from both sides of the deal, and can lure both agents and clients by offering access to its inventory. Private exclusives have become a key strategy for the brokerage giant: Reffkin told analysts in February that 35% of the company's active listings nationwide were only available by working with a Compass agent or visiting Compass.com.

This isn't just some self-serving maneuver, either, Compass execs argue. They say sellers benefit from spurning the MLS and marketing their homes within the safe confines of the Compass network. The MLS and search portals like Zillow show how long a house has been on the market and whether the price has been slashed, data points that buyers can use to put pressure on homeowners in negotiations. The Compass website doesn't show price cuts or days on the market, theoretically allowing a seller to test their ideal price without any repercussions if they have to backtrack. And if they don't sell that way, they can always turn to the MLS and go the conventional route for maximum exposure. Compass likens this strategy to beta testing a product with a smaller audience before launch.

"We firmly believe that homeowners should have full control and flexibility in choosing how they market their home, period, full stop," Ashton Alexander, the head of strategy at Compass, tells me.

Brian Boero, the CEO of 1000Watt, a brand and marketing agency for real estate companies, doesn't buy it. Compass, he says, is really after control. Under the existing rule, the company may be free to pursue its "Private Exclusives" strategy, but it can't, for instance, publicly market a home on its website without also contributing to the MLS.

"They want to make Compass.com a destination where they control the inventory publicly, and they want to have free rein to continue to expand their private listings program," Boero tells me. "So they didn't get what they wanted."

Compass is far from the only large brokerage to employ this kind of strategy — Coldwell Banker, for instance, has "Exclusive Look," Howard Hanna has "Find It First," and one large Keller Williams franchise, KW Go, has dubbed its offering "Private Collection." More companies have threatened to follow the lead and keep listings off the MLS if it helps them compete for agents and clients. The clear cooperation policy has always been tough to enforce, too, with the onus placed on local MLSes to keep agents in line. Some MLSes, fearing litigation, have already backed off enforcement, tacitly allowing agents to market homes however they like. This could enable private listing networks — groups of typically high-achieving agents from different brokerages who share off-MLS listings among each other — to flourish.

NAR's decision to keep clear cooperation is a small victory for those who favor the status quo, but it will hardly end the practices fracturing the housing market. Compass hasn't ruled out the possibility of litigation over the rule, either. For now, the real estate industry is stuck in a sort of limbo. No one doubts that secret listings will continue to rise, but the fight over the clear cooperation policy isn't going anywhere.

"Everybody loses here, in a way," Boero tells me. "Nobody's happy."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

• Housing inventory could improve as boomers age and pass on their homes, Zillow says.
• Rust Belt markets are poised to benefit the most from this trend.
• Here are the top 5 markets that are ripe for a so-called silver tsunami.

In what's been dubbed a silver tsunami, there's an $84 trillion generational wealth transfer that's slated to happen in the next two decades as boomers age and pass on their assets.

That could seriously shake up a housing market where home ownership is heavily skewed toward older Americans. Boomers, who comprise 20% of the overall US population, owned 36% of all homes in 2024, according to Freddie Mac. They're also sitting on over $17 trillion, or roughly half, of the total home equity in the US.

The silver tsunami might not be a silver bullet for the housing crisis at a national level, according to Orphe Divougny, a senior economist at Zillow.

But certain markets throughout the country have a particularly high concentration of empty-nest homes, which are expected to come on to the market as their boomer owners either downsize or pass away, according to Zillow. If you're looking to buy a home but have been discouraged by the lack of supply on the market, these areas could provide an easier entry point.

Boomer-heavy metro areas don't have much overlap with the expensive markets popular with Gen Z and millennials such as San Jose, Austin, and Denver, according to Zillow. That means inventory in those hot spots won't see much of a boost from empty-nester houses coming onto the market. Rather, many of the markets that have a high concentration of empty-nest households are located in the Rust Belt.

But Gen Z and millennials are proving that they're increasingly willing to relocate out of expensive metro areas and seek affordability, thanks to the flexibility of remote and hybrid work. In fact, there's been a recent trend of younger Americans moving out of cities and into suburban or exurban communities. Some are going even further into rural areas.

For homeowners willing to look outside the popular housing markets, there are deals to be found where the boomers are located.

"When these homes hit the market as owners downsize or otherwise move on, that extra supply should benefit buyers," Divougny said.

Listed below are the top five housing markets that'll benefit from the silver tsunami and the percentage of empty-nest households in each, according to Zillow. For context, the average empty-nester share of households in 2022 nationwide was 16%.

5 housing markets ripe for a silver tsunami

Pittsburgh, PA

% of empty-nest households: 22%

Buffalo, NY

% of empty-nest households: 20%

Cleveland, OH

% of empty-nest households: 19%

Detroit, MI

% of empty-nest households: 19%

New Orleans, LA

% of empty-nest households: 18%

• Millennials and Gen Z are packing up and leaving cities with high housing costs.
• They're moving to suburban and exurban communities while balancing hybrid work schedules.
• Here are 8 hot housing markets located outside major metropolitan areas, according to Zillow.

Young Americans sick of the high housing costs in major cities but unwilling to commit to going country are exploring a third option: moving to the burbs.

This development is a marked departure from the "back to the city" movement pioneered by millennials in the 2000s and 2010s. However, considering the historical context, moving out of crowded urban areas isn't unprecedented.

Suburbs are as American as apple pie. Armed with postwar GI Bills providing housing assistance and bank accounts bolstered by economic expansion, Americans poured out of cities and into mass-produced suburban Levittowns in the 1950s and 60s. Thus, the American dream of a home with a white picket fence was born.

According to Orphe Divounguy, senior economist at Zillow, young Americans are taking it one step further and moving to the exurbs — communities located past denser suburban areas but still within commuting distance to the metropolitan center.

"These communities strike a balance between suburban amenities while being located less than 90 miles outside of the offerings and thriving job markets of large urban centers like New York City or Boston," Divounguy told Business Insider in an email.

Post-pandemic, millennials, and increasingly, Gen-Z, have been giving up city life for the suburbs and exurbs, partly because they're getting priced out but also because they've developed changing lifestyle habits regarding flexible working arrangements.

"The increase in hybrid work models is likely contributing, leading more people to discover hidden gem cities that they may have previously overlooked when daily commutes were standard," Treh Manhertz, senior economic research scientist at Zillow, wrote in a recent report.

According to the moving company Hire a Helper, cities like New York, San Jose, and Los Angeles were top of the list for cities millennials moved out of in 2023. And between 2021 and 2022, millennials and Gen Z comprised almost two-thirds of the total number of departees from New York, an analysis conducted by Business Insider found.

That's not to say city living is out. Young people are still moving into expensive markets, according to Divounguy, but there's an undeniable proportion of the younger population leaving the cities.

This trend was reflected in 2024 Zillow user preferences. The real estate company analyzed metrics such as page-view traffic, home value growth, and days on market to gauge which housing markets with the highest level of consumer demand. Out of the top 10 most popular housing markets on the site, seven were suburban or exurban locations, which are listed below.

7 exurban communities homebuyers are eyeing

Manchester, New Hampshire

Approximate distance to nearest metro area: 50 miles away from Boston

Stamford, Connecticut

Approximate distance to nearest metro area: 35 miles away from New York City

Columbia, Maryland

Approximate distance to nearest metro area: 20 miles away from Baltimore

Bridgeport, Connecticut

Approximate distance to nearest metro area: 60 miles away from New York City

Allentown, Pennsylvania

Approximate distance to nearest metro area: 60 miles away from Philadelphia

New Haven, Connecticut

Approximate distance to nearest metro area: 80 miles away from New York City

Waterbury, Connecticut

Approximate distance to nearest metro area: 80 miles away from New York City

When Zillow debuted in 2006, the fledgling site bore little resemblance to the real-estate behemoth it is now. There were no options to find an agent, get a mortgage, or request a tour — the search portal couldn't even tell you which homes were actually for sale. There was, however, the Zestimate: a "free, unbiased valuation" for 40 million houses around the US, based on a proprietary algorithm. Half the single-family homes in America suddenly had a dollar figure attached to them, and anyone could take a peek. Zillow's site crashed within hours as a million people raced to ogle at the results.

The initial rush was a sign of things to come. Nowadays, the Zestimate is arguably the most popular — and polarizing — number in real estate. An entire generation of homeowners doesn't know life without the algorithm; some obsessively track its output as they would a stock portfolio or the price of bitcoin. By the time a seller hires a real-estate agent, there's a good chance they've already consulted the digital oracle. For anyone with even a passing interest in the housing market, the Zestimate is a breezy way to take the temperature. Keep tabs on mortgage rates all you want, but they can't tell you that your house has appreciated 20% over the past year, or that your annoying coworker's property is worth more than yours.

Many industry insiders, however, regard the number as a starting point at best and dangerously misguided at worst. Real-estate agents recount arguments with sellers who reject their pricing advice, choosing instead to take the Zestimate as the word of God. One meme likens its disciples to adults who still believe in Santa. Zillow itself lost hundreds of millions of dollars during the pandemic when it relied on its algorithm to buy homes at what turned out to be inflated prices, part of an ill-fated attempt to flip homes at scale.

The Zestimate is just one of a slew of automated valuation models that are increasingly used by banks, investors, and laypeople to estimate the value of homes. No other model, however, has wormed its way into our culture like the Zestimate. The model, like other consumer-facing AVMs, is prone to errors that render it more of an amusement than a serious pricing tool. But while the algo's price-guessing skills may be suspect, it's undeniably elite at one thing: luring people to Zillow-dot-com.

The Zestimate is both everywhere and an enigma. About 104 million homes, or 71% of the US housing stock, have a little dollar figure hovering above them on Zillow's website. One of them is the house in Austin where I was raised until the age of 10. It's not for sale, but right underneath the address, in bold, is the Zestimate. Next to it is a "Rent Zestimate," or the amount the owner could probably charge a tenant each month. You can click to see a graph of its Zestimate over the past decade — the Zillow-fied value of my childhood home rose a staggering 72% from May 2020 to its peak in May 2022 but has since dropped 24% from that top tick thanks to the chill running through the Austin market. In just the past 30 days, the Zestimate has dropped by $4,455. Ouch.

Just how accurate are those numbers, though? Until the house actually trades hands, it's impossible to say. Zillow's own explanation of the methodology, and its outcomes, can be misleading. The model, the company says, is based on thousands of data points from public sources like county records, tax documents, and multiple listing services — local databases used by real-estate agents where most homes are advertised for sale. Zillow's formula also incorporates user-submitted info: If you get a fancy new kitchen, for example, your Zestimate might see a nice bump if you let the company know. Zillow makes sure to note that the Zestimate can't replace an actual appraisal, but articles on its website also hail the tool as a "powerful starting point in determining a home's value" and "generally quite accurate." The median error rate for on-market homes is just 2.4%, per the company's website, while the median error rate for off-market homes is 7.49%. Not bad, you might think.

But that's where things get sticky. By definition, half of homes sell within the median error rate, e.g., within 2.4% of the Zestimate in either direction for on-market homes. But the other half don't, and Zillow doesn't offer many details on how bad those misses are. And while the Zestimate is appealing because it attempts to measure what a house is worth even when it's not for sale, it becomes much more accurate when a house actually hits the market. That's because it's leaning on actual humans, not computers, to do a lot of the grunt work. When somebody lists their house for sale, the Zestimate will adjust to include all the new seller-provided info: new photos, details on recent renovations, and, most importantly, the list price. The Zestimate keeps adjusting until the house actually sells. At that point, the difference between the sale price and the latest Zestimate is used to calculate the on-market error rate, which, again, is pretty good: In Austin, for instance, a little more than 94% of on-market homes end up selling for within 10% of the last Zestimate before the deal goes through. But Zillow also keeps a second Zestimate humming in the background, one that never sees the light of day. This version doesn't factor in the list price — it's carrying on as if the house never went up for sale at all. Instead, it's used to calculate the "off-market" error rate. When the house sells, the difference between the final price and this shadow algorithm reveals an error rate that's much less satisfactory: In Austin, only about 66% of these "off-market Zestimates" come within 10% of the actual sale price. In Atlanta, it's 65%; Chicago, 58%; Nashville, 63%; Seattle, 69%. At today's median home price of $420,000, a 10% error would mean a difference of more than $40,000.

Without sellers spoonfeeding Zillow the most crucial piece of information — the list price — the Zestimate is hamstrung. It's a lot easier to estimate what a home will sell for once the sellers broadcast, "Hey, this is the price we're trying to sell for." Because the vast majority of sellers work with an agent, the list price is also usually based on that agent's knowledge of the local market, the finer details of the house, and comparable sales in the area. This September, per Zillow's own data, the typical home sold for 99.8% of the list price — almost exactly spot on. That may not always be the case, but the list price is generally a good indicator of the sale figure down the line. For a computer model of home prices, it's basically the prized data point. In the world of AVMs, models that achieve success by fitting their results to list prices are deemed "springy" or "bouncy" — like a ball tethered to a string, they won't stray too far. Several people I talked to for this story say they've seen this in action with Zillow's model: A seller lists a home and asks for a number significantly different from the Zestimate, and then watches as the Zestimate moves within a respectable distance of that list price anyway. Zillow itself makes no secret of the fact that it leans on the list price to arrive at its own estimate.

Other sites have their versions of the Zestimate, too — there are actually about 25 different AVMs in the market, says Lee Kennedy, the founder and managing director of AVMetrics, a company known for independently testing these models. Realtor.com will show you three estimates, each from a different AVM provider. Redfin, a Zillow competitor, also has its own model. Kennedy has been studying AVMs for more than three decades, but it wasn't until the advent of Zillow that the masses became aware of them. Consumer-facing AVMs, like the Zestimate or the Redfin Estimate (Restimate?) are meant to be used informally, he says, as casual starting points before consulting real experts. They're not supposed to be used for real pricing, which should be left to the big guys — the "business-to-business" AVMs used by banks, investors, and the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lauryn Dempsey, a real-estate agent in the Denver area, gives similar advice to her clients.

"They're tools that provide information," Dempsey says, "but they should not be used in a vacuum to make decisions."

The business-to-business models are so costly to develop, Kennedy tells me, that they'll probably never be offered to regular people for free. But his testing indicates they're much more reliable. His firm has unveiled blind testing that looks at how models perform before taking into account the list price, a method that penalizes those aforementioned bouncy algorithms. The standard measurement breaks down how often the model can get within 10%, in either direction, of the actual selling price. In a highly urbanized area with lots of housing transactions, some of the models can correctly get close to the final selling price about 80% to 90% of the time — "not bad," Kennedy says. AVMs of all kinds work best in areas with a lot of homes that look and feel roughly the same. Cookie-cutter suburbs are heaven; areas with a wide range of home styles and ages, like Boston, pose a greater challenge. The value of a ranch home in the middle of nowhere is even tougher to peg.

So the Zestimate isn't exactly unique, and it's far from the best. But to the average internet surfer, no AVM carries the weight, or swagger, of the original. To someone like Jonathan Miller, the president and CEO of the appraisal and consulting company Miller Samuel, the enduring appeal of the Zestimate is maddening. "When you think of the Zestimate, for many, it gives a false anchor for what the value actually is," Miller says.

Miller is no unbiased observer. Given that he's an appraiser who estimates the value of homes for a living, it should come as no surprise that he's siding with the humans over the robots. But he raises real issues, highlighting the disconnect between the public's continued use of the Zestimate and its actual track record.

I could say that I virtually stalked my childhood home for "research," but let's be real: By the time I scrolled to the bottom of the page, I had fully surrendered to the voyeuristic urges that draw millions of visitors to the Zillow website each month. It's been almost two decades since I've stepped inside the house, and I can only imagine the changes its new owners have made to my old room (sadly, no pics of the interior). But with the aid of Zillow, my trip down memory lane was lined with data: I walked away with intimate knowledge of the home and its occupants. Prior to 2006, no regular person had this kind of power.

The launch of Zillow spawned a whole genre of internet snooping that, if anything, has only intensified in the years since. When I call up John Wake, a former economist and real-estate agent who now writes the newsletter Real Estate Decoded, he reveals that he, too, looked up his childhood home only a few months ago. "That part is really fun," he tells me. Keeping tabs on your own Zestimate, though, can provide less of a thrill. In December 2022, after interest-rate hikes tamped down home prices, Wake shared with his followers on X that his Zestimate was down 18% from May: "YIKES!" In a 2020 column, the Wall Street Journal editor Kris Frieswick opened up about the difficulty of quitting the algorithm: "My self-worth is defined by my Zestimate. Each day I approach Zillow.com filled with hope, and fear." The column reads mostly as tongue-in-cheek, but plenty of people take their number very seriously. As Frieswick pointed out, at least several disgruntled homeowners have actually sued Zillow over Zestimates they said were inaccurate.

Looking up other people's houses, by comparison, is a mostly harmless pastime. Bosses, neighbors, lovers, and exes — all are fair game in the all-seeing eyes of the tool. During the heat of the 2021 homebuying frenzy, a "Saturday Night Live" sendup of a Zillow ad declared: "The pleasure you once got from sex now comes from looking at other people's houses." The skit, which featured a lot of moaning and sultry mood lighting, was mostly about the fantasies of browsing homes for sale on Zillow — as one YouTube commenter observed, "They didn't even get into the naughty pleasure of looking up all your friends' Zestimate values." This kicked off a thread of others chiming in with "guilty!" and lots of cry-laughing emojis. "OMG I thought this was just my kink," another person replied. I imagine all of these people at a raucous dinner party, bonding over their exploits on zillow.com. And here I am, the buzzkill in the corner talking about median error rates.

Virtual spelunking aside, the hazards of the Zestimate are most obvious when a seller actually decides to list their home. Francine Carstensen, a real-estate agent in Alabama, says those in her line of work have a complicated relationship with the Zestimate: "We love it, and we hate it." A lofty estimate might jolt a homeowner into action — "I could sell my house for what?!" — and drive more business her way. But the number can also make it hard to do her job. A few times, she tells me, she's lost clients over a pricing disagreement involving the Zestimate. It can be difficult enough to pry a seller away from their unrealistic expectations without a number on a screen confirming their hopes for a bigger payday.

"I hate it when they tell me, 'Well, this is what Zillow tells me my house is worth,'" Carstensen says. "Because it's very rarely accurate."

Accuracy may not even be the point. It didn't appear to be in 2006, when the beta version of the Zestimate launched. "The Zestimate started out fairly inaccurate, but it didn't matter," Rich Barton, a Zillow cofounder who was then its CEO, recalled in a 2021 podcast episode. "It was provocative." Spencer Rascoff, another cofounder and former CEO, sold his own home in 2016 for 40% less than its Zestimate. The next year, the company offered $1 million to whoever could improve the Zestimate algorithm the most. The winning team, a group of three data scientists working remotely from the US, Canada, and Morocco, beat the Zillow benchmark by 13%.

No misstep appeared more damning, however, than the implosion of Zillow's homebuying business. In 2018, the company launched Zillow Offers, making all-cash offers to sellers looking to move quickly and seamlessly. In theory, Zillow could then turn around and offload the home in short order for a modest fee, plus however much the home had appreciated. The company used a combination of internal algorithms and human analysts to value the home and predict what it could sell for in a few months — in some cases, homeowners could get an immediate cash offer based on their Zestimate with just a few clicks. But the company's forecasts turned out to be way off base. Zillow Offers squandered $422 million in the third quarter of 2021 alone — a Business Insider investigation found that almost two-thirds of the homes listed by Zillow in Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and Minneapolis were being marketed at a loss. Amanda Pendleton, a Zillow spokesperson, tells me it was the volatility of the market, not the Zestimate, that really led to the program's downfall. Once the losses came to light, the company swiftly shuttered the division and laid off a quarter of its staff.

I remember wondering whether this would be the death knell for the Zestimate, a kind of algorithm-has-no-clothes moment. I was wrong. Zillow and its best-known creation haven't gone anywhere — the company continues to highlight its progress, providing periodic updates as its data scientists tinker away at the formulas. As search portals like Homes.com and Redfin jockey with Zillow for dominance, the Zestimate is too valuable of an asset to give up. People still flock to Zillow for those little numbers next to each home, for the thrill of feasting their eyes upon something that, like salaries, is considered taboo to talk about in person. For Zillow, that's an unequivocal win.

"It's 100% a marketing tool," says Mike DelPrete, a scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies the intersection of tech and real estate. "Like, not even 99%. It's a marketing tool."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

• Zillow analyzed millions of listings to find key words and phrases being mentioned more.
• It identified five trends it predicts homebuyers will keep clamoring for in 2025.
• Interest in vintage-inspired interiors and electric-vehicle chargers, for example, is booming.

The American home is having an identity crisis.

Many newly constructed homes are smaller, with fewer hallways and shrinking backyards — yet they are significantly more expensive than just a decade ago.

As homebuilding trends evolve, buyers and homeowners are also reimagining what they want from their living spaces.

By analyzing hundreds of home features and design styles from millions of for-sale listings in 2024, Zillow has identified the top emerging home trends for the year ahead.

Zillow found that in response to higher living costs and growing concerns about the climate crisis, buyers will want homes that are eco-friendly, resilient to climate disasters, and equipped with smart home technology.

"Technology has empowered homeowners to live more sustainably and affordably, which is increasingly important to prospective buyers," said Amanda Pendleton, Zillow's home trends expert. She added that homeowners and buyers are simultaneously "looking to the past" to give their homes character, even in "the most high-tech environments."

According to Zillow, here are five home trends to watch in 2025, from solar-powered energy systems to vintage-inspired interiors.

1. Buyers want homes that protect them during natural disasters

The climate crisis is driving a rise in extreme weather events including hurricanes, wildfires, and tornadoes across the US.

The increasing frequency and intensity of these storms have encouraged people to seek homes that offer enhanced safety during natural disasters — that are hurricane-resistant, for example. Homes like that may reduce the risk of costly repairs.

Zillow found that mentions of flood barriers in for-sale listings have increased by 22% since 2023, while references to water catchment systems have risen by 19%. The use of the term seismic retrofitting — the modification of structures to enhance their earthquake resistance — is up 20%. Drought-resistant turf yards also appear in listings 14% more frequently than last year.

2. People want to live in eco-friendly homes

Homebuyers don't just want a house — they want one equipped with smart, eco-friendly technology that helps reduce their carbon footprint.

Zillow found that the fastest-growing sought-after feature this year is whole-home batteries. These systems, often paired with solar panels, store excess energy for use during cloudy days or power outages. Mentions of this feature in for-sale listings have increased by 62% compared to last year.

Buyers are also showing greater interest in electric vehicle (EV) chargers, which have appeared in 34% more Zillow listings compared to 2023, and induction cooktops, up 5% from last year.

3. People are on the hunt for "cozy" homes that offer comfort and solace in stressful times.

Zillow found that as the pandemic-era dip in home prices fades, so too does some buyers' preference for larger living spaces.

In search of greater affordability, many are now gravitating toward cozier homes that may also be more budget-friendly.

As a result, mentions of "cozy" — sometimes a euphemism for "small" — in for-sale listings have increased by 35% compared to last year.

6. Buyers are looking for spa vibes at home.

According to Zillow, as homeowners prioritize mental and physical well-being, "wellness design" is emerging as a major trend in homes.

Data from the company shows that the share of for-sale listings featuring wellness-focused amenities has increased by 16% compared to last year.

One such feature gaining traction with buyers is the wet room, a waterproof space that combines a shower and bathtub into one seamless area, often without a shower curtain or glass divider.

Popular in Europe and Asia for years, Zillow predicts wet rooms may make their way into more American homes.

5. Homebuyers are embracing a vintage aesthetic.

Young homebuyers will reject the minimalist styles favored by older generations and embrace vintage interior designs featuring antique furniture, floral patterns, and tapestries.

Zillow's data highlights a growing interest in nostalgia-driven design, with mentions appearing in 14% more for-sale listings compared to 2023. Similarly, references to "vintage" have increased by 9%. The company also found that bibliophilic decor and home libraries are gaining popularity, with mentions rising by 22% in listings.

It's not just the "I Love Lucy" set that homebuyers want to channel — many will also aim for "The Gilded Age."

Zillow found that mentions of Victorian-era sculleries — hidden back kitchens used for meal prep and entertaining —have increased by 8% in for-sale listings this year compared to last.