Algorithmic Disruptions to Expertise: The Impact of the Home Valuation Tool Zestimate on Real Estate Professionals’ Work

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Algorithmic systems increasingly influence knowledge-intensive work and reconfigure professional expertise. This article investigates how real estate agents [N = 15] experience and respond to the digital real estate platform Zillow and its home valuation algorithm, Zestimate. Based on semi-structured interviews, we show how publicly available algorithmic estimations reshape professional practices and client–agent relations by altering information asymmetry, monitoring, and accountability within the principal–agent relationship. To sustain their relevance under these conditions, agents proactively develop reintermediation practices, including interpreting algorithmic outputs, explaining discrepancies, and strengthening relational safeguards. By combining a principal–agent perspective with an intermediation lens, this study contributes both structural and practice-level insights into algorithmic disruption, illustrating how algorithmic systems reconfigure professional authority and how professionals, in response, actively negotiate and adapt their role and value.