Zillow Group’s revenue climbed 18% to $772 million in the second quarter, topping the high end of its own guidance, even as the company posted a small net loss and saw site traffic decline for a second straight quarter, the company reported Aug. 5. The results land one day after Zillow disclosed cutting more than 500 jobs in its second and largest restructuring of 2026.
Zillow’s net loss was $4 million, or 2 cents per diluted share, compared with net income of $2 million, or 1 cent per share, in the second quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA, the profitability measure Zillow emphasizes most, rose to $176 million, a 23% margin. The company ended the quarter with $682 million in cash and investments.
Mortgages and rentals outgrow the core listings business
Zillow’s three main segments grew at sharply different rates. Residential revenue — the company’s largest segment, covering Premier Agent advertising, Showcase listings and new-construction marketing — rose 7% to $465 million. Mortgages revenue jumped 75% to $84 million, driven by a 95% increase in purchase loan origination volume to $2.2 billion. Rentals revenue grew fastest of the three major segments in percentage terms, up 31% to $209 million, powered by 42% growth in multifamily listings revenue.
“Zillow delivered another quarter of strong results and consistent execution,” CEO Jeremy Wacksman said in the release, describing the company as “the operating system for modern real estate.”
Traffic keeps slipping even as revenue grows
Average monthly unique users fell 2% year-over-year to 239 million, and total visits fell 2% to 2.5 billion. Zillow said its traffic decline was smaller than the broader real estate category’s, meaning the company gained relative market share of online real estate traffic even as absolute visits fell — a dynamic that helps explain how Zillow grew revenue and pricing power on a shrinking audience.
The quarter’s results included $36 million in restructuring costs and $26 million in Federal Trade Commission litigation costs, both of which weighed on GAAP profitability without affecting the adjusted EBITDA figure. The restructuring charge reflects the more than 500 jobs — about 7% of Zillow’s roughly 7,058-person workforce — that the company announced it was cutting on Aug. 4, one day before these earnings.
For full-year 2026, Zillow reaffirmed guidance of $2.92 billion to $2.96 billion in total revenue, representing mid-teens percentage growth, and adjusted EBITDA of $730 million to $760 million.
What it means: Zillow’s results show a company growing revenue and profitability metrics even as its core traffic erodes — a trend that depends on monetizing a shrinking audience more effectively through mortgages, rentals and premium agent products. Whether that strategy has a ceiling, and whether the job cuts announced the day before earnings reflect cost discipline or a response to slowing residential growth, are questions the company’s reaffirmed guidance does not directly answer.
