Zillow Group: What It Is and How It Compares to Real Estate Marketplaces

When people think of online property listings, Zillow Group, a U.S.-based digital real estate company that runs Zillow, Trulia, and StreetEasy, primarily focused on residential home searches, price estimates, and agent connections. Also known as Zillow, it's the name most American homebuyers recognize—but it's not the tool commercial investors use. If you're looking to buy a warehouse in Texas or lease office space in Chicago, Zillow Group won't give you the data you need. That’s because it wasn’t built for commercial real estate. Its strength is in residential sales: showing home values, mortgage calculators, and connecting buyers with local agents. But for commercial deals—where income, tenant history, zoning, and cap rates matter—you need something else.

The real powerhouse for commercial property data is CoStar, the largest online commercial real estate marketplace, offering verified listings, sales records, tenant profiles, and market analytics used by brokers, developers, and institutional investors. CoStar tracks lease expirations, building square footage, and tenant credit scores—details Zillow doesn’t even collect. While Zillow shows you how much a three-bedroom house in Atlanta sold for last month, CoStar tells you what the retail space next door is leasing for, who’s in it, and how much the owner paid five years ago. That’s the difference between browsing and investing. Many users confuse Zillow with a full-service real estate database, but it’s more like a classifieds site with fancy graphs. It’s great for homeowners, but for commercial deals, it’s like using a flashlight to navigate a warehouse.

Even within residential markets, Zillow Group has limits. Its Zestimate home values are often inaccurate, especially in rural areas or markets with low sales volume. And while it connects you to agents, it doesn’t verify their experience or track their transaction history. Meanwhile, platforms like CoStar and LoopNet serve professionals who need audited data, not estimates. If you’re serious about commercial property—whether you're buying, selling, or leasing—you’ll find better tools elsewhere. The posts below cover what actually matters: how to market commercial property, what credit score you need for a commercial loan, how to value a property using the rule of three, and why CoStar is the industry standard. You won’t find a single post here about Zillow’s home value estimates. That’s because we focus on what works for investors, landlords, and buyers who need real data—not guesswork.