For better or worse, AI tools will increasingly shape the way consumers research and make important life decisions. Some people use chatbots as therapists or boyfriends, but we won’t go into those topics here.
So why not use more AI in your home buying process? Zillow believes that’s what consumers want.
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The real estate market announced Wednesday a partnership with Google that will make Zillow’s home buying content available within its featured NotebookLM notebooks.
This collaboration aims to provide buyers with faster and clearer answers to common questions, with answers based directly on Zillow’s existing guidance and articles.
NotebookLM is Google’s personalized AI research and thinking tool built to help users interact with complex information through questions, summaries, and quotes.
Your new home for all your real estate questions 🏡
Introducing some noteworthy notes. @Zillow For first-time home buyers! Get insights from Zillow’s experts on preparing to buy, evaluating your finances, understanding the market, avoiding common pitfalls, and more.
Please access… pic.twitter.com/8lWnndBhx1
— NotebookLM (@NotebookLM) February 18, 2026
Rather than generating a wide variety of answers like a generic chatbot, Zillow Notebook pulls directly from content created by Zillow and links answers back to the original source on Zillow.com.
Users can explore content in multiple formats, including NotebookLM’s “Audio Overview,” which turns document guides into conversational audio discussions with two AI voices. Topics range from the first steps in buying a home to choosing the right real estate agent.
For Zillow, the move reflects a broader strategy to extend home listings beyond traditional search and into AI-native environments where consumers increasingly spend more time researching and planning.
Inman tried Zillow’s NotebookLM tool and thought:
Designed to inform buyers rather than replace agents
The first thing that stands out is the ease of use of the tool.
It’s quick and intuitive to use, and is modeled after common conversational chatbots, but with some thoughtful interface upgrades. On the left side of the screen, users can see the sources that inform each answer, adding a layer of transparency. The “Studio” panel on the right provides short audio and video instructions that walk users through the various stages of the home buying process.
In reality, the chat itself mostly provides basic information, but this seems to be by design. This tool is clearly aimed at buyers looking for basic guidance regarding residential real estate.
Viewed through that lens, Zillow’s NotebookLM doesn’t pose much of an existential threat to real estate agents. Most agents already know this instinctively, and more importantly, they bring local expertise that cannot be replicated by generalized AI tools.
That said, tools like this are contributing to widespread change. Buyers now have more information available than ever before. As access to information expands, consumers are likely to become more selective when choosing agents.
There is also a flipside to this. Easy access to surface-level knowledge can also create a false sense of expertise. Because of this, some consumers may feel more confident than they actually understand.
Local policy enters chat
Where this tool really shines is in the creation of custom “notebooks.”
To test its depth, I asked a series of questions about the housing market in Nashville, where I live, to see how well it handles market-specific context. The results were better than expected.
When we asked how the Nashville market is currently finding first-time home buyers, the tool provided a concise but comprehensive overview. We touched on inventory growth, increased buyer leverage, price stabilization, broader economic conditions, and practical affordability strategies.
It also includes commentary on the city’s unified housing strategy, which aims to address an estimated 90,000 new housing shortage over the next 10 years. What stood out was the level of local policy awareness.
Overall, the response was impressive and the provenance clear. The references displayed on the left appeared relevant, up-to-date, and authoritative, reinforcing credibility for the output.
Although this tool appears to be built for buyers, it can also be useful for real estate agents, especially new ones. Having this type of localized data readily available can serve as a valuable starting point for understanding and contextualizing the market.
But do consumers really want further advances in AI?
The Zillow LLM Notebook contains really useful information and serves as a helpful resource for buyers, especially first-time buyers looking for clear, basic guidance.
However, the challenge is saturation.
Currently, there are countless LLM-based and chatbot-based tools that demand our attention. So the natural question is: Why use Zillow’s NotebookLM when you can use Claude or ChatGPT, tools that many consumers already know and trust? In fact, Zillow already has an app embedded within ChatGPT.
As Cheryl Howard, founder and CEO of Howard Consulting, recently discussed on the ILL blog, the breakneck pace of technological change in the AI era is already exhausting people. So while Zillow’s new tool may excite early adopters, it may be barely noticeable above the noise for many consumers.
The advantage of Zillow NotebookLM is its specificity. Its notebooks are trained on a vast amount of proprietary Zillow data, meaning its responses are tightly aligned with Zillow’s listings, insights, and resources.
The tool seems designed to keep users within Zillow’s ecosystem rather than sending them out to the broader web, which makes sense.
Initial reactions to X have been largely positive. Although a few users made tongue-in-cheek remarks, most feedback praised the tool’s usefulness, especially for first-time buyers, and highlighted its ability to surface “hidden” and often confusing parts of the home buying process.
My concern is not with the quality of the tools, but with the moment we are in. Consumers are inundated with AI-native systems, and at some point, the richness becomes more overwhelming than empowering.
It’s like the early days of streaming. When Netflix first became popular, it felt liberating. Today, the incredible amount of movie and TV choices are less freeing and more infuriating (at least for me).
With new AI products being introduced at a relentless pace, even great tools from household brands like Zillow are at risk of getting lost in the churn.
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