Solano Real Estate Scene: Jim Porter
Article By: Jim Porter – April 4, 2026
The names Google, Uber, Airbnb, Zoom, DoorDash, FedEx, Venmo, PayPal and Zillow are often used as a verb in a sentence. I remember asking my secretary at Beneficial Finance to Xerox some documents for me back in the early ’80s and nowadays people Uber to restaurants and Google places and things every day.
It was February 2006 when Zillow.com launched with the Zestimate, a proprietary algorithm providing valuations for over 40 million homes. They gave away the Zestimate for free for a few years while they gathered our data and built a huge database, which they later used to sell advertising and leads to real estate agents and lenders.
People still use the name Zillow as a verb, but the company’s profits over the past 14 years resemble Xerox more than Google. Xerox is trading at less than $2 per share and lost a couple billion over the past couple years. Zillow made a net profit of $23 million in 2025, which was the first profitable year since 2012, and is trading at $41 per share – down from $93 per share last year.
Zillow remains the most visited real estate website in the country and is recovering from a home buying business called “Zillow Offers” that they ran from 2018 till they shut it down in 2022. Zillow lost over $500 million in 2021, but now that they have returned to their roots – selling leads and advertising – they squeaked out a tiny profit of $23 million from $2.6 billion in revenue in 2025.
The headline could be, “Zillow makes a profit for the first time in 14 years,” but another headline could be, “After bringing in $2.6 billion in gross income, Zillow spent $2.577 billion in expenses for a profit of less than 1% of its revenue.”
I am not exactly sure what the point of this column is today, but I thought the Zillow story is an interesting lesson on business and sticking with the business plan. Zillow should have left the house flipping and home selling business to the local professionals.
Jim Porter, NMLS No. 276412, is the branch manager and senior loan adviser of Solano Mortgage, NMLS No. 1515497, a division of American Pacific Mortgage Corporation, NMLS No. 1850, licensed in California by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the CRMLA / Equal Housing Opportunity. Jim can be reached at 707-449-4777.
Jim Porter, NMLS No. 276412, is the branch manager of Solano Mortgage, NMLS No. 1515497, a division of American Pacific Mortgage Corporation, NMLS No. 1850, licensed in California by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the CRMLA / Equal Housing Opportunity. Jim can be reached at 707-449-4777.
