Shares of the publicly traded real estate marketplace have tripled over the last year.
Zillow cofounders Richard Barton and Lloyd Frink debuted on the Forbes Billionaires list on Tuesday following a heady year both for their company and the broader residential real estate market. Barton,53, joins the rankings with a net worth of $2.2 billion and Frink,56, with $1.4 billion. They are among five U.S. real estate billionaires to join the list for the first time. A spokesperson for Zillow declined to comment on the news. In the 12 months ending March 6, when Forbes finalized the rankings, shares of the publicly traded real estate marketplace nearly tripled. The rise was spurred by a dramatic spike in demand for housing, which sent median American home prices soaring 10% over the past year, according to CoreLogic, inflated by low inventory, rock-bottom interest rates and a spike in activity driven by prospective buyers fleeing cities and seeking more space in the wake of the pandemic. CoreLogic predicts an additional 3.3% bump by January 2022. “We in the shelter business are really lucky,” Barton told CNBC last May. “We didn’t know, when this first hit and the fog was thick, where this was going to go….
