Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman is preparing for the next revolution in real estate

CEO InterviewsZillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman is preparing for the next revolution in real estate“AI can be used for great things, but it could also be used to misrepresent what a house looks like or what a listing photo looks like,” he said.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Add NBC News to GoogleCEO of Zillow Shares an Inside Look at the 2026 Housing Market05:00Get more newsLiveonShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 15, 2026, 8:48 AM EDTBy Jason Abbruzzese and Christine RomansA list of addresses and a car: This is how Americans have gone house hunting for decades. And that’s what Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman was doing with NBC News recently not far from Manhattan.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.A nice house in Rutherford, New Jersey, was listed for about $600,000. Not far from there, small homes were going for $2 million. “A lot of things have changed in real estate,” Wacksman said. “But it’s still ‘location, location, location,’ right?” FORSUBSCRIBERSWacksman and Zillow have overseen much of that change. He has been with the digital real estate giant since 2009, long enough to recall a time when online home listings still seemed new and the mere idea of buying anything online, let alone a house, seemed exotic and risky.But driving around New Jersey on a spring morning, Wacksman talked about even greater changes ahead.To be sure, many of the macroeconomic dynamics of home buying will remain the same: the challenges of supply and demand, shifting mortgage rates and markets both national and local that can swing with the overall economic outlook.What has changed is transparency. Thanks in large part to Zillow and the many other online real estate platforms, homebuyers and sellers now have far more information than they did just a few decades ago.Next up, Wacksman is eyeing the homebuying process itself, boosted by a heavy dose of AI. Though the car will still have a role to play.“Longer term, th...