Zillow Posts $158 Million Third Quarter Loss as Shares Plunge 16 Percent After Hours

Zillow Group closed the third quarter of 2026 with a net loss of $158 million, a sharp swing from the net income of $10 million it recorded in the third quarter of 2025. The Seattle housing company reported the results on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, and investors sold the stock hard in after hours trading, sending the shares down 16 percent.

Revenue rose 7 percent from a year earlier to $724 million, but that was not enough for Wall Street. The figure missed the Zacks consensus estimate of $754.27 million by 4.01 percent. Adjusted earnings came in at $0.55 per share, below the Zacks consensus estimate of $0.60 per share, a miss of 8.33 percent.

Housing sales stay slow

The core home buying and selling business kept struggling. Residential segment revenue fell 4 percent from a year earlier to $419 million. The company said mortgage rates were higher than it had expected, and that put pressure on the number of homes changing hands. Revenue in the for sale business was flat at $489 million.

Traffic to the company's sites and apps also slipped. Average monthly unique users fell 3 percent to 215 million, and total visits fell 5 percent to 2.3 billion, based on Comscore data the company cited.

Rentals and mortgages grow

Two smaller businesses did the heavy lifting in the quarter. Rentals revenue rose 26 percent from a year earlier to $220 million. Mortgage revenue rose 32 percent to $70 million, and purchase loan origination volume jumped 55 percent to $2.0 billion.

Those gains were not enough to offset the slow housing market and the wider loss. Before Wednesday, Zillow shares had already lost about 54.1 percent since the start of the year, while the S and P 500 had gained 10.6 percent, according to Zacks.

A weak guide for the fourth quarter

The outlook for the rest of the year gave investors little relief. Zillow guided fourth quarter revenue to between $635 million and $665 million, well below the $709.5 million analysts expected, according to FactSet figures reported by Barron's. The company also said it expects residential revenue to fall 9 percent to 15 percent from a year earlier in the fourth quarter.

The report lands in a housing market where high mortgage rates have kept many buyers and sellers on the sidelines for months. Zillow now needs its rentals and mortgage growth to carry more of the business while home sales stay slow, and Wednesday's numbers showed that gap is still open.