I came across a piece in National Mortgage Professional last week about Zillow partnering with Google to integrate its home-buying content into NotebookLM. This move builds on Zillow’s upstream strategy after integrating with ChatGPT at the end of 2025.
If you have not played with NotebookLM yet, it is Google’s AI research tool. You give it sources and it becomes an expert on those sources. Zillow is now feeding it its home-buying content library. Guides on preapproval, affordability, the buying process. All of it flows into an AI tool consumers are increasingly using for early research.
On the surface, it reads like a consumer education win. And honestly, in isolation, maybe it is.
But I keep coming back to distribution, because that is what matters.
Consumers are changing where they start. They are not typing “what does preapproval mean” into a search bar and clicking a blog post the way they used to. They are opening an AI tool and asking questions. The first conversation is happening inside that environment, and the answers they get in that first session shape everything that follows. What they believe is possible. What they think the process looks like. Who they trust.
Zillow understands this. They have spent years building one of the most dominant top-of-funnel positions in housing. The NotebookLM integration is not a pivot. It is simply moving further upstream. They are meeting consumers at the budgeting stage, the “am I even ready?” stage, before a single property search or lender conversation ever happens.
That matters because Zillow’s business is not built around neutral education. It is built around monetizing intent. Free information has always been the entry point. Lead routing has always been the exit. Premier Agents, lender partners, paid placements. That is the model. This integration just tightens the loop and reaches the consumer sooner.
Here is what I think this means for loan officers and agents.
Consumers are going to show up more informed than ever, except their information will have been curated by a platform with a financial interest in where they land. They will feel confident. They may feel like they have already done their homework. And the content that shaped their confidence may have nothing to do with you.
For most LOs, won’t feel too dramatic. People who value real advisory relationships will still seek them out. Loan officers who build trust early will still win business. But it does raise an uncomfortable question. At what point are you actually entering the conversation?
If the first time a consumer becomes aware of you is when they fill out a form or ask about a rate, you have probably missed the formative part of the decision cycle. Zillow just made sure of that.
I don’t write this to be alarmist. And I am not suggesting this replaces what good lenders and agents do. It does not. Platforms that own attention will always try to own the transaction. Zillow is not doing anything surprising. They are doing what well-capitalized platforms do.
The real question is whether the mortgage and real estate industry is being equally intentional about where it shows up in a consumer’s journey, or whether we keep waiting for people to come to us.