The Sleeper to the Trulia Acquisition: Mortgages
This isn’t really news anymore (I meant to finish this post earlier this week), but wanted to call attention to the fact that Zillow Mortgage Marketplace recorded over $10M in revenue this past quarter (see press release here).
I’ve long thought mortgages was the massive sleeper component of the Trulia acquisition to make such a large number ($2.5 billion) make sense for Zillow. Trulia’s mortgage center was previously powered by Bankrate. Now, Zillow handles all that traffic with its own mortgage offering — Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. They are certainly not monetizing that traffic at the level Bankrate is, but that’s fine because they are focused on winning the consumer over the long term with a better product. No doubt monetization will increase with more scale.
And…that’s the long game Zillow plays that few others can.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 17:29h, 07 AugustWhere does their mortgage revenue come from? Are they doing mortgages or getting a referral fee for recommending a lender?
What is expense is eating their revenue the most? I see revenue increased by $70 million in 6 months and their loss dropped from $53 million to $44 million, so about $9 million of the $70 million increase made it to the bottom line.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 17:32h, 07 Augusthttp://www.zillow.com/advertising/Mortgage.htm