Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff at the Premier Agent forum. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Zillow Group topped $1 billion in revenue for the first time in 2017, and the Seattle-based real estate data company said it also had a record quarter for revenue to close out the year.

Zillow reported $1.07 billion in revenue in 2017, beating analyst expectations and up 27 percent from 2016 when it brought in $846.6 million in revenue. In the fourth quarter, Zillow logged non-GAAP earnings of $0.19 per share on a record $282.3 million in revenue. Analysts surveyed in advance by Yahoo Finance expected earnings of $0.19 per share on $277.8 million in revenue.

Zillow said it got an average of 151 million monthly unique visitors to its various websites and apps during the fourth quarter. In July, the company set a record for web traffic with 187 million unique visitors.

“Zillow Group had another fantastic year of record results in 2017 and exceeded $1 billion in revenue for the first time,” Zillow Group CEO Spencer Rascoff said in a statement. “We successfully transitioned advertisers to an auction-based pricing model, launched RealEstate.com, and continued to grow our emerging marketplaces, including two strategic acquisitions. We believe the next phase of our company’s evolution will make Zillow Group an even more meaningful part of the home-shopping experience. In 2018, we plan to deliver better experiences for consumers buying, selling or renting a home, and strengthen our partnerships with real estate professionals by aligning our growth with their success.”

In October, Zillow announced a new feature called “3D Home” that lets users build 360-degree tours of homes like they would using the panoramic setting on their iPhone camera. Photographs are uploaded through the app and stitched together automatically by Zillow to create a seamless tour from room to room. The service went live in Phoenix in January.

Also in October, Zillow pledged to contribute $5 million in cash and in-kind contributions over the next five years as part of its first social impact program called The Home Project. The initiative is meant to address housing insecurity through donations to community organizations in each city where Zillow has offices, groups nominated by employees and by leveraging its own data and products to bring awareness to the issue.

Zillow has been on a roll financially, but its Zestimate tool has come under legal scrutiny in recent months. In January a group from New Jersey sued Zillow, alleging that letting some partners move the Zestimate valuation tool lower down on listings hurts competition and amounts to a violation of U.S. anti-trust laws. That followed a lawsuit in Illinois against Zillow, alleging that the Zestimate tool constitutes an appraisal and created a “tremendous roadblock” to selling a home. That case was eventually dismissed, but the lawyer, Barbara Andersen, later refiled and her amended complaint is still pending.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the status of the lawsuits against Zillow’s Zestimate.

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