Zillow Wants to Be Your Roofer

Monetizing The Plumber

Authored by Tinaya Sisler 10/14/26

I’m a REALTOR®. In today’s automated tech world that means I’m supposed to be doing one or two of three things; dancing on TikTok, harassing strangers on the phone, and shouting on Facebook why AI “could neva”.

Apparently I am supposed to be shaking in my boots that AI is coming to replace me, while simultaneously using it to “build my brand”, and DEFENDING MY ENTIRE PROFESSION FROM THE TROLLS.

But I’m not interested in writing another article on why technology could never replace a real estate agent. I’m sure your various feeds are full of similar posts from the 15 agents you know talking about how hard we work for free, drive all over the place on our own money (cries in $4.99 gas), the hours spent negotiating contracts, property evaluations, and all the things an algorithm supposedly couldn’t do. (I particularly love the posts where agents bravely question if you’d do open heart surgery on yourself or let a robot do it when the talk of FSBOing and e-offer platforms come up.)

But I’m actually more interested in what happens to the plumber.

You heard me. And the HVAC guy, the roofer, and the independent contractor that spent 40 years building a solid business with a great reputation and book of business thicker than Winifred Sanderson’s Book of Witchcraft & Alchemy, who now wants to retire and has discovered the next generation doesn’t have the capital to buy out his magic secret to success model.

Because the technology companies reshaping real estate aren’t necessarily stopping at real estate.

And whether you own a home, rent one, or hope to one day buy one, you’re a part of the Economic Great Reshapening.

The Platform Doesn’t Have to Swing the Hammer

Here’s the funny thing about the companies positioning themselves to dominate the home-services industry: they don’t actually have to know how to fix a damn thing.

They don’t need a plumbing license, a truck full of tools, or forty years of experience diagnosing why someone’s air conditioner decided to die on the hottest day of the Texas summer. They don’t even need to employ the person who shows up to fix it.

They just need to control how the homeowner finds that person. Ding Ding Ding!

[Side Bar Nation Over Here; One company figured out years ago how to intercept the consumer before they reached the service provider: Zillow. They used the MLS as their way in. [1] When Zillow approached Multiple Listing Services across the country they asked them to syndicate their data to their platform under the guise that “More consumers will find your listings from across the country and globe if it’s all sent to ONE site!” The best part is they offered to do it for free. WOW What a deal all the agents remarked. Remember, kids: if the tech is free you’re the product. Now when you want to see a house and you click a button Zillow sells your request back to agents. [2] Usually not even the agent who has the listing you like. You’re probably going to get Becky again. Becky doesn’t know shit about that house without opening up the MLS to regurgitate the same info you can read on Zillow save a few private remarks and supplemental docs.]

And that’s where things start getting interesting. Because while private equity firms have been busy buying up established plumbing, HVAC, and electrical companies, technology platforms have been quietly building something potentially just as valuable: control over the relationship between homeowners and the people they hire. The Contact Connection.

Zillow is a particularly interesting example. What started as a place to browse houses has expanded into an ecosystem of mortgages, agent services, transaction software, and even directories for home-improvement professionals. [3] Click a button, get Becky the agent, click another, get Zack from Zillow Home Loans (Previously Mortgage Lenders of America), or Michael from your local Banana Stand Mortgage Group “There’s always money in the Banana Stand ™.” And now introducing!!!! Rachel in the Call Center! Rachel manages inbound consumer calls for Utility Connect promising to offer a white-glove, single-phone-call marketplace that helps transitioning homeowners compare and instantly connect with local utility providers and essential home service professionals (including local plumbers). [4]

The question isn’t whether Zillow is going to show up tomorrow with a roofing crew. They are already working on that. It’s here. [12]

It’s what happens when the company that helps you find the house also wants to help decide who you call when the roof starts leaking.

There’s always a Middleman

As much as you bridge trolls love to rail on how Realtors are nothing more than middlemen, the world runs on middlemen.

[Sidebar nation rise up! I don’t necessarily think middlemen are inherently bad. I love a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy. Do you know how many cool places and things I’ve seen and done because of a string of connections across the globe? How many mornings I woke to flat tires zipping across Mexico, Central and South America, that were fixed in mere minutes because a stranger I met in town or host had a guy? My guy, I have guys. You need guys too.]

Utility Connect is a perfect example of how this new arrangement works. The company partners with real estate professionals and platforms to connect people moving into homes with utilities and other essential services. It’s convenient, it’s marketed as free to the consumer, and everybody gets to feel like someone has taken another tedious task off their plate.

Except there’s a business model behind that convenience. Utility Connect has advertised revenue-sharing arrangements that pay referring real estate professionals a percentage of revenue generated from services their clients sign up for. One published arrangement offers 15%. [5] That doesn’t establish what Zillow earns, or what an individual plumber pays to participate, but it tells us something important: the introduction itself has become a product.

And that’s the beauty of being the middleman. You don’t have to install the water heater, crawl through the attic, or answer the emergency call at two in the morning. You just have to be standing between the customer and the person who does.

Private Equity Has Entered the Chat

Meanwhile, another group of investors has discovered the value of the people who actually do the work. Private equity firms have been buying established HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses, sometimes combining multiple local companies into larger regional operations. [6]

On paper, there’s a reasonable business case. These are essential services with recurring demand, established customer relationships, and opportunities to share administrative costs, equipment, marketing, and scheduling. For an aging business owner without a successor, selling to an investment-backed company might even provide the retirement payout they’ve spent decades working toward. [7]

But there’s another side to that transaction. The company that used to belong to the guy whose name is painted on the truck may now belong to investors hundreds or thousands of miles away. The technicians might still be local, the trucks might still have the same logo, and the customers might never notice the ownership changed. But the decisions about growth, pricing, staffing, and profits may be made somewhere else entirely.

Everybody Wants a Piece of the Pipe

Now put these two developments together. On one side, technology platforms are finding increasingly sophisticated ways to capture customer attention and turn referrals into revenue. On the other, investment firms are acquiring the businesses that provide the services those customers need.

None of this automatically means worse service, higher prices, or fewer jobs. A good referral platform can bring customers to a struggling small business [Sidebar time, there was an agent in my office years ago who would send me some of her realtor.com leads she didn’t want to handle ie small list prices, and one of those guys looking at an 80k trailer became my best investor client EVER and I miss him so much] , and a well-capitalized buyer can help a local company expand. But it raises questions about how many businesses can collect revenue from the same transaction, how much economic power remains with independent operators, and whether the people performing the work share in the growth via efficiencies (and wages) everyone keeps promising.

And what about all those kids we’ve spent the last decade telling to skip college and go to trade school? You know all the talking points; less student debt, good-paying jobs, and skills AI supposedly can’t replace yada yada. But if private equity and tech platforms keep taking their pound of flesh, how well will those trades actually pay?

And more importantly, what happens when one of those kids wants to buy Winifred’s Book of Business and strike out on his own? How’s he supposed to compete with a private equity firm bidding on the same business? Why are we selling trade school as a path to a good job instead of a path to owning the damn company?

Because no matter how many platforms, algorithms, investors, and call centers get involved, the toilet is still broken. Somebody still has to drive to the house, figure out what’s wrong, and fix it.

So what happens when one company controls how customers find a plumber, another company owns the plumbing business, and the plumber is the only one who actually knows how to fix the toilet?

Who Gets the Efficiency Dividend?

The Great Efficiency Sales Pitch

For decades, Americans have been promised that technological advancement and increased productivity will make everyone more prosperous. Work smarter, produce more, grow the economy, and eventually everyone benefits. It’s not new! Every technological revolution seems to arrive with the same promise: things will be faster, cheaper, easier, and more efficient. Artificial intelligence is no different. Companies are promising to automate administrative work, eliminate unnecessary steps, reduce operating costs, and accomplish in minutes what once took hours.

And some of those promises are real. I can appreciate software that saves me three hours of paperwork as much as the next person. But there’s a difference between making work easier and making the benefits of that work available to everyone.

If a company can accomplish the same amount of work with half the employees, that’s an efficiency gain. But what happens to the money it saves? Do customers pay less? Do the remaining employees earn more? Or does the difference become another line on a shareholder’s quarterly earnings report?

Productivity Isn’t a Paycheck

We’ve already run this experiment. For decades, economists have studied the relationship between worker productivity and compensation. Producing more economic value doesn’t automatically mean the people producing it receive a proportional share. Technology can increase output while the financial rewards flow disproportionately toward business owners, investors, or those controlling the technology.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, American worker productivity increased 93.7% between late 1979 and mid-2026. The hourly compensation of typical workers increased just 32.7% over the same period. Workers became nearly twice as productive, but their compensation grew at a fraction of that rate. [8]

And before somebody starts blaming a president, or points to what country does it better, this trend has been developing since the 1970s. The Bureau of Labor Statistics was documenting the divergence between productivity and compensation back in 2017, using research covering the previous three decades. [9]

Now we’re introducing artificial intelligence into an economy where the relationship between increased productivity and increased compensation has already been coming apart for nearly fifty years.

And the early research isn’t exactly reassuring. One major study found that AI-assisted customer service workers could resolve approximately 15% more issues per hour. [10] Another study examining AI adoption in Denmark found no measurable average increase in earnings over two years, despite reported productivity benefits. [11]

Those aren’t the same workers or even the same country. But they illustrate the question we should be asking every time another company announces that AI is going to revolutionize productivity.

Now apply that to the housing industry. A platform automates scheduling. A service company centralizes dispatching. An AI system handles customer inquiries. Maybe the plumber can complete more jobs in a day, and maybe the business saves thousands in administrative costs.

But unless some of those savings reach the plumber’s paycheck or the homeowner’s invoice, who’s actually enjoying all this newfound efficiency? If AI allows a company to handle twice as many customer inquiries without hiring additional employees, that’s a potential financial benefit to the company. If a plumber can complete more jobs because software handles scheduling, dispatching, and billing, that’s a potential benefit to the plumbing business. BUT there’s nothing automatic about those savings becoming higher wages, lower consumer prices, or shorter working hours.

Somebody has to decide where the money goes.

Cheaper for Whom?

There’s another problem with measuring progress entirely through efficiency. A company can reduce its labor costs without reducing its prices. It can eliminate positions without improving the wages of the people who remain. It can make its services more convenient while simultaneously charging businesses for access to the customers who use them.

None of these outcomes is inevitable. Technology can create new jobs, improve working conditions, and lower costs. But those benefits aren’t guaranteed simply because someone introduces an algorithm into the process.

And that’s where this stops being a conversation about Zillow, plumbers, or even real estate. Because the people earning wages in one part of the economy are the customers supporting another.

If we’re going to celebrate a future where fewer people are needed to perform the same amount of work, we ought to spend at least as much time discussing how those people are supposed to earn a living.

What I WON’T BE DOING is celebrating thousands of people losing their livelihoods to automation as a sacrifice on the altar of efficiency. People who do that are gross. I don’t care how much you think Realtors suck and we are all Bad Becky’s out here, people have a right to earn a living if this is the system we are going to live in: you know the kind that takes money?

At the end of the day, I care about the plumber.

I care about the roofer, the electrician, and the HVAC technician. I care about the people who build houses, maintain them, repair them, and hope to own one themselves.

Because an economy that eliminates people’s livelihoods without replacing their purchasing power eventually runs into a fairly obvious problem:

If the plumber doesn’t have a job, who the fuck is going to buy a house from me?

Sources and Notes

1. Zillow, Zillow debuts AI mode, bringing guided intelligence to every step of the housing journey, https://www.zillow.com/news/zillow-debuts-ai-mode/ . Context only: This contemporary release does not independently document the historical MLS syndication pitch as quoted in the sidebar. Historical sourcing remains needed for that precise account.

2. Zillow, How Zillow’s new AI mode works throughout the real estate journey, https://www.zillow.com/news/how-zillows-new-ai-mode-works-throughout-the-real-estate-journey/ . Context only: The general lead-generation business model is established, but this source does not independently verify every detail of the sidebar’s description of how a specific lead is routed or sold.

3. Zillow, Home Improvement Professionals in Houston, TX, https://www.zillow.com/professionals/home-improvement-reviews/houston-tx/ ; Zillow, Zillow shows how it is building an AI-native housing platform, https://www.zillow.com/news/zillow-ai-native-housing-platform/ . The directory URL’s current contents were not independently retrieved in this pass.

4. Utility Connect, Zillow partner page, https://www.utilityconnect.net/zillow/partner ; Zillow, Advantage Program Partners, https://www.zillow.com/new-construction-advertising/advantage-program-partners/ . These support the third-party service partnership, not direct employment of plumbers by Zillow.

5. Utility Connect, Brokers and Agents: Features, https://www.utilityconnect.net/brokers-and-agents/features ; Utility Connect, Nexus program, https://www.utilityconnect.net/nexus/v/index.php?key=0 . The 15% is a published referral arrangement; it is not established as Zillow’s commission or as a fee charged to plumbers. Reconfirm the specific rate on the live offer before publication.

6. Forbes, Private Equity Is Taking On The Skilled Trades (October 17, 2024), https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/10/17/private-equity-taking-on-skilled-trades/ ; The Wall Street Journal, America’s Newest Class of Millionaires: Plumbers and HVAC Entrepreneurs, https://www.wsj.com/business/entrepreneurship/plumbers-hvac-skilled-trades-millionaires-2b62bf6c .

7. Forbes, Private Equity: Friend Or Foe? What Skilled Trades Contractors Need To Know (July 12, 2026), https://www.forbes.com/sites/brynncooksey/2026/07/12/private-equity-friend-or-foe-what-skilled-trades-contractors-need-to-know/ .

8. Economic Policy Institute, The Productivity–Pay Gap, updated September 14, 2026, https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ . Figures cover 1979 Q4 to 2026 Q2: 93.7% net productivity growth and 32.7% growth in hourly wages and benefits for private-sector production and nonsupervisory workers. The measures are inflation-adjusted but not identically defined.

9. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Understanding the labor productivity and compensation gap (June 2017), https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/understanding-the-labor-productivity-and-compensation-gap.htm . Study covers 1987–2015 and reports productivity outpacing compensation in most of 183 industries.

10. Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li, and Lindsey R. Raymond, Generative AI at Work, Quarterly Journal of Economics (2025), https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/140/2/889/7990658 . The measured gain was in customer-support issues resolved per hour, not a measured increase in pay.

11. NBER, Still Waters, Rapid Currents: The Diffusion of AI in the Workplace, working paper, https://www.nber.org/papers/w33777 . Danish study: no statistically detectable average effect on earnings or recorded hours in the study’s observed period.

12. Zillow, Zillow shows how it is building an AI-native housing platform, https://www.zillow.com/news/zillow-ai-native-housing-platform/ ; Zillow, Zillow debuts AI mode, https://www.zillow.com/news/zillow-debuts-ai-mode/ . Important qualification: These sources establish Zillow’s broader housing-service ambitions, but do not establish that Zillow itself operates roofing crews or books roofing jobs directly. The sentence in the article is the author’s rhetorical interpretation, not a verified announcement of a Zillow roofing operation.