(GeekWire Photo / Nat Levy)

Redfin beat analyst expectations for its fiscal fourth quarter, reporting revenue of $244.5 million, up 5% year-over-year, and earnings per share of $0.11. Wall Street expected revenue of $235 million and earnings per share of $0.04.

A hot real estate market helped Redfin’s monthly active visitors grow to a record 44.1 million, up from 30.6 million in the year-ago quarter, an increase of 43%. Its mortgage business grew revenues by 210%.

Shares of Redfin stayed level in after-hours trading. Update: Redfin shares were down more than 10% in early trading Thursday.

For full year 2020, Redfin’s revenue was up 14% to $886.1 million, while net losses dropped to $18.5 million from $80.8 million in 2019.

After a big dip in March, Redfin’s stock price has skyrocketed, trading at around $90/share Thursday. Shares dropped 16% in October after Redfin announced a new offering of $575 million in convertible senior notes. The company’s market capitalization is more than $9 billion.

Analysts at Wedbush set a 12-month price target of $109/share for Redfin. In a post-earnings research note, they pointed to increasing demand for Redfin services and the company’s moves to improve search ranking via machine learning and localizing its site for midsize cities.

Redfin and other real estate tech companies including fellow Seattle giant Zillow Group are benefiting from a strong U.S. housing market that gained nearly $2.5 trillion in value last year, the most since 2005, according to a Zillow analysis.

Median sale prices are up 14% year-over-year, and the number of homes sold is up 12%, according to Redfin data. Low mortgage rates coupled with strong demand and low supply — number of homes on the market hit an all-time low last month — are driving tailwinds for the real estate industry.

“We were the fastest-growing major real estate website, as home-buyers moving to a new part of the country have increasingly turned to the Internet to find a real estate agent,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said in a statement. “Since more than half of all homes now sell in a bidding war, our on-demand home-touring has become a crucial competitive advantage for our customers, who want to see a listing either in-person or virtually before other buyers even know it’s for sale.”

On the company’s earnings call, Kelman compared the housing market to a “Soviet-era supermarket with most of the shelves empty.” He cited a Redfin listing in Dallas that had 154 showings and 32 offers. Redfin’s annual survey of nearly 2,000 home-buyers found that 63% bid on a home without even seeing it in person.

Another tailwind for Redfin: home-buyers are increasingly going online to find a real estate agent.

“We rank very highly for those searches and we offer push-button convenience,” Kelman said. “People can say, ‘look, I just want to see the home and I’m not ready to get married to my real estate agent.’ They give us a shot, and that’s all we need to win the business.”

Redfin in June resumed its RedfinNow home-buying business after pausing it due to the pandemic. It launched RedfinNow in Seattle and San Francisco in December, and expanded it to Phoenix last month.

The company’s Properties segment, which includes RedfinNow, posted revenue of $39.4 million in the fourth quarter, down from $99 million last year, while gross losses grew to $1.8 million from $1.3 million.

Redfin laid off 7% of its staff and furloughed hundreds of agents in April. The company in July said it hired most of the furloughed employees back and resumed hiring in several markets.

Redfin last week announced a planned $608 million acquisition of RentPath, the Atlanta-based operator of Rent.com, Rentals.com and ApartmentGuide.com. The deal, Redfin’s largest acquisition to date, will add 700 employees to Redfin’s tally of 4,000 employees. RentPath posted revenue of $194 million last year.

However, potential regulatory headwinds await. In December, RentPath terminated an agreement to be acquired by CoStar Group following a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit to block the deal, citing potential harm to consumers due to consolidation in the residential rental market.

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