For over a decade, real estate portals like Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com dominated the digital house hunt. They blanketed the internet with ads, became household names, and turned massive marketing budgets into user traffic and lead generation.
Even Homes.com has entered the fray, investing billions in a high-stakes bid to catch up. Famously spending tons of money to get top billing at the past two Super Bowls along with commercials from Dan Levy and even Morgan Freeman.
But the playbook that got them here—brand-first, platform-centric, top-of-funnel—no longer fits how buyers behave.
That era is ending. And what comes next is direct-to-consumer.
Buyers Aren’t Looking for a Brand. They’re Looking for a House.
Nearly every homebuyer now begins their journey online:
Almost half say their first step was browsing listings.
But here’s the catch: they aren’t starting on a portal homepage.
They’re landing directly on listings through Google, embedded MLS widgets, social media, or AI chat tools. They don’t care what brand powers the page. In 2023, Google announced its SGE initiative. From what I can see, it spells the beginning of changing online search as we know it today.
They care about the house, the photos, and the facts.
The Funnel Is Flattening
Portals once built their entire model around a linear journey: homepage → filters → search results → agent form. Every step was a monetization opportunity.
Today, every step is friction—and friction is fatal.
Buyers are skipping the funnel.
Search views are down and search volume is down.
Meanwhile, click-to-call and click-to-website actions are up, signaling a clear shift: buyers aren’t browsing—they’re acting.
They don’t want to explore your interface. They want to see the kitchen—and maybe schedule a tour.
Adding to the problem, 47% of inquiries sent through portals go unanswered.
It begs the question: if nearly half of consumer attempts to connect are ignored, why wouldn’t buyers move faster and look elsewhere?
Portals no longer guide the journey—they slow it down. Buyers, conditioned by a digital world that rewards immediacy, are increasingly bypassing traditional search funnels altogether.
Portals Are Becoming Plumbing
The shift is underway: real estate portals are transforming from front-end destinations to invisible infrastructure.
They still power listing distribution and generate leads—but increasingly in the background. Buyers don’t remember the brand that showed them a listing. They remember the property.
This is precisely what happened in the travel industry.
Expedia and Orbitz built awareness through ads.
Then Google Flights and Airbnb rewrote the script with speed, simplicity, and utility.
Digging deeper, in 2024, Skift reported that Google’s dominance in travel search had forced brands like Expedia and Booking.com into the background, making them invisible infrastructure rather than consumer destinations. Travelers no longer care which site powers their booking—they care about finding the best option, fastest. Real estate searches follow a similar arc: buyers often don’t remember which portal showed them the home. They remember the property, the price, and the speed of access.
The brand stopped mattering. The result became the product.
That same evolution is now playing out in real estate.
Lead Funnels Are Obsolete. Control Belongs to the Buyer.
Buyers don’t want to talk to someone early. They want to explore silently, at their own pace. They want to scroll through listings like they scroll Instagram or shop for flights.
Over 80% still use agents, but not until they’ve done their own research.
Behavioral data shows buyers engage only after private, extended browsing.
The old lead-funnel—capture early, nurture, convert—is broken. Push too soon, and you lose them.
Experience Beats Spend. Access Beats Branding.
High ad budgets used to buy relevance. Today, they buy clutter.
Speed is now the differentiator:
If it takes one click to find a home on Google but four on your app, you’ve already lost.
If your portal asks users to log in or create an account before they can see photos? They’re gone.
Buyers don’t want a platform.
They want a path.
Inventory Fragmentation Is the New Threat
Portals also face another challenge: fragmented inventory.
As brokerages increase their use of exclusive listings, pocket listings, and private networks, buyers are forced to piece together the puzzle. This dilutes portal value and gives an edge to anyone—agents, MLSs, or tools—who can aggregate access across sources.
Even Zillow’s brand ubiquity can’t overcome the lack of inventory. The consumer wants it all in one place—now.
Real Estate Search 4.0: Direct-to-Consumer, Distributed, and Embedded
The future of real estate search isn’t a destination.
It’s a presence—decentralized, embedded, and always-on.
It’s a place where buyers no longer start on a homepage. They land directly on listings, regardless of where they are: search results, TikTok, a text thread, or a voice query.
They don’t care about the portal’s logo.
They care about the house, the photos, and the facts.
This is Real Estate Search 4.0:
Inventory-first, not brand-first.
Frictionless, not funnel-based.
Distributed, not centralized.
Both industries evolved from browsing brands to selecting products instantly.
Real estate is going direct.
And the winners won’t be the platforms that demand attention—they’ll be the ones that quietly deliver it.
Mike Delpret talked about this during last year’s Inman Connect. It is subtle, but it’s there. Fast forward to 19.02. 😀 Shout out to Christine Choi, who sits on 25V’s advisory board, for reminding me of Mike’s comment.
💬 Final Thoughts
Real estate search is evolving from centralized portals to distributed access points. The winners won’t be those who demand attention—they’ll be those who deliver the home, instantly, wherever the buyer happens to be.
xoxo,
Maximillian Diez,
GP, Twenty Five Ventures
P.S. Stay with me on this journey.
If nothing else, thanks for reading.
