Why Are a Growing Number of Home Builders Partnering With Zillow Offers?

Buyers want to make that leap to own their new dream home, but one thing stands in their way: their current house. To alleviate that pain point, Zillow forged a partnership between home builders and Zillow Offers, which is its direct-to-consumer homebuying and selling platform. And the program is heating up: Nine companies joined the program in mid-January 2020. Using these partnerships, homebuyers can then sell to Zillow while waiting for their new home to be built. In theory, this could help more potential buyers make the move without worrying about carrying two mortgages or seeing their dream home turn into somebody else’s while they wait to sell.

Zillow’s nascent partnership between homebuilders across the country and Zillow Offers — it’s direct-to-consumer homebuying and selling platform — is continuing to grow.

The Seattle-based technology company announced Thursday nine new homebuilders across multiple markets have agreed to participate in the program.

The program allows consumers to sell an existing home to Zillow but also wait up to eight months to close on the sale of that home while the new one is being built. Zillow is hoping the program will eliminate a lot of the uncertainty surrounding the sale of a new home and the subsequent move into a newly constructed one. It’s aimed at eliminating the prospect of having to carry multiple mortgages or the stress of timing the sale of the home just right.

“Many new construction buyers are also trying to sell their current home at the same time as buying, which is stressful,” Lucy Wohltman, vice president of new construction at Zillow, said in a statement. “Not only are these buyers trying to prepare for open houses and align timelines, they can be struggling with the daunting reality of owning two homes at once.”

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