Zillow Group is promoting two longtime leaders as part of an “organizational realignment” to reflect the company’s new focus on the end-to-end home-buying and selling experience.
The Seattle company on Monday named Susan Daimler as president and Jeremy Wacksman as chief operating officer.
Daimler replaces Wacksman, a 11-year Zillow veteran who most recently was president. Wacksman was previously chief marketing officer prior to taking the president role in 2018.
“I have full confidence that Jeremy and Zillow’s senior leadership are now organized to deliver on an integrated customer transaction experience,” Zillow CEO Rich Barton said in a statement.
Zillow has several lines of business including Premier Agent; its Zillow Offers home-buying and selling service; closing services; mortgages; and more.
The company is reorganizing its structure to focus more on the customer’s holistic needs — they may need an agent, then a mortgage, then a Zillow Offers bid to sell their home, for example.
Barton alluded to the “bundled seamless transaction” on the company’s earnings call with analysts.
“The world is going to one click — why not real estate? That’s where we’re headed,” Barton said. “The fact that we have invested in every one of these ancillary services and now can begin to stitch them together in a way that a lot of the folks who provide point solutions can’t or struggle with — this is a big strategic bet.”
Barton added: “We’re really excited by the early signals that we’re seeing in an integrated bundled offering. It just makes so much sense.”
Zillow last week beat analyst estimates for its fourth quarter earnings. The company is 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.
The company’s annual revenue last year increased 22% from 2019, while overall traffic hit a record 9.6 billion page views, up 19%.
Daimler joined Zillow in 2012 and previously was senior vice president of the company’s Premier Agent business, which saw revenues climb 35% to $314 million in the fourth quarter. She will report to Wacksman and lead an “integrated product team for buyers and sellers,” and continue overseeing Premier Agent.
“Susan is an important and deeply influential voice in the real estate industry and a highly respected leader within the company, for good reason,” Barton said.
Prior to starting at Zillow in 2009, Wacksman spent three years at Microsoft in marketing and product management at Xbox. Daimler started and sold SeatGuru to Expedia in 2007, then sold Buyfolio to Zillow in 2012.
