The Zillow Group said it would pay $ 500 million to acquire ShowingTime, a Chicago-based real estate company that sells software to facilitate home exhibitions.
ShowingTime has a network of nearly one million agents across North America and facilitated more than 50 million exhibitions last year. Its software is used by 370 Multiple Listing Services. The 225-person company also produces market reports.
Zillow will take advantage of ShowingTime’s technology for its Premier Agent business. The Seattle company said it plans to keep ShowTime as an “open platform” available to anyone, just as it did with previous acquisitions, including Dotloop and Bridge Interactive.
“The addition of ShowTime to our suite of real estate technology solutions gives us the opportunity to accelerate a widely adopted solution to the complexity of scheduling a tour,” said Zillow CEO Rich Barton in a letter to shareholders. “ShowsTime’s technology already extends to the broader real estate sector and we intend to increase its adoption by agents for the benefit of all participants and customers in the sector.”
ShowingTime is led by President and CEO Scott Woodard, who helped start the company in 1999. Woodard previously sold ZyLAB to a Battelle subsidiary.
This is the second largest acquisition of Zillow to date, measured in price, behind its massive $ 2.5 billion purchase from Trulia in 2015. It is the company’s 17th acquisition to date.
Zillow is acquiring ShowTime as it continues to invest and increase Zillow Offers, its home buying and selling service.
Zillow also announced its fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday, exceeding estimates with $ 789 million in revenue, as the company benefits from a strong real estate market in the U.S. that has gained nearly $ 2.5 trillion in value in the last year, the largest since 2005, according to the company’s analysis.