Zoopla
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Features
How did the big property portals take over the industry?
Andrea Kirkby takes a tour through the property portals 10 years on...
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Latest property news
ZPG results: buying spree dents profits but revenues increase
ZPG has published its full-year results, revealing a substantial increase in turnover but smaller than expected profits. The group, which operates portals Zoopla and PrimeLocation, saw its turnover increase by 24% but profits only rise by 2%, reflecting the costs of its many acquisitions over the past year including – it was announced today – a Dutch AVM provider called Calcasa. It joins other acquisitions including personal finance website money.co.uk, agent software firm Expert Agent, agency website provider TecniWeb, agent print media and signage specialist Ravensworth and data firm Hometrack. This buying spree helped push up ZPG’s debt by £45 million to £191 million, or nearly 80% of its turnover for the year of £244.5 million, while its borrowings have increased in value by £110m to £266m. ZPG says it now has 14,772 branches signed up to its portals, a 6% rise compared to the same time last year, which helped push up revenue within its property arm by 41%. Revenue per branch This, the company says, is in part down to the 1,000 agents it claims have left OnTheMarket and returned to Zoopla over the past 12 months. ZPG also now says it has 969,000 listing on its sites,…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket takes legal action to prevent agency’s return to ZPG
OnTheMarket has taken legal action against one of its departing agents just hours after it had announced a return to ZPG’s portals. West-Sussex 15-branch agency Henry Adams had announced it was to leave OnTheMarket and rejoin Zoopla, its Chief Executive Philip Jordan (pictured, below) saying he was “very pleased to be back with ZPG”. The agency is based in Chichester but has branches in other parts of West Sussex as well as in Surrey and Hampshire. The corks were also flying at ZPG’s headquarters in London as Mark Goddard, ZPG’s Managing Director of Property Service, sounded equally ecstatic, saying he was “delighted to welcome back Henry Adams”. But the move proved too quick for OnTheMarket, which promptly issued legal proceedings preventing the move. Media coverage An OnTheMarket spokesperson said: “”We noted media coverage on 15 November 2017 that Henry Adams had signed an agreement with Zoopla to list all of its properties on its websites. “As at 16 November 2017, Henry Adams is not listing its properties on any of the ZPG websites. “The firm continues to list its properties at OnTheMarket.com in accordance with its current listing agreement and remains a valued member.” ZPG confirmed that the move by Henry Adams…
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Latest property news
GoCompare board rejects offer by ZPG to buy company
ZPG has confirmed it has made an offer to buy insurance, mortgages and loans comparison site GoCompare.com but, after the deal was leaked yesterday, is now “considering its position”. Both ZPG, the parent company of Zoopla and PrimeLocation, and GoCompare have confirmed that ZPG made an unsolicited offer to buy the comparison website at £1.10 a share to be paid for in ZPG shares, valuing it at £460m. “This was unanimously and unequivocally rejected by the Board which believed that it fundamentally undervalued the business and its prospects,” a GoCompare statement says. “Since May, [we have] delivered H1-2017 results which were ahead of expectations.” GoCompare also says the offer, which was made last waeek, represented a discount on the value of the company based on its 11 October 2017 share price of £110.5p, although the offer was considerably higher than its later share price of 0.95p on 7th November. Opportunistic offer “ZPG’s Proposal is highly opportunistic and fundamentally undervalues the Company and its prospects,” says the comparison website’s Chairman Sir Peter Wood (pictured, below). GoCompare only recently demerged from motor and home insurance specialist Esure after which, in November 2016, its share price stood at 74.5p valuing the company at…
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Supplier advice
The top 3 ways agents can impress vendors
Mark Goddard, MD of ZPG Property Services, says, if you look after the needs of your vendors, you're on the right track to win instructions and gives 3 tips to help you do that.
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Latest property news
Next year is make or break for proptech, say leading portal exec
The next twelve months are going to be a tipping point for technology in the housing market, two of the industry’s leading proptech figures have said. Speaking at this week’s conference organised by The Negotiator at The London Hilton hotel, Paul Whitehead, Chief Strategy Officer at ZPG and James Morris-Manual of 3D tours platform Matterport both made the prediction, although from different perspectives. Paul (pictured, below) told the audience of agents that although the past two years had seen a huge “flurry of activity” in the proptech world, he thought it was time for them to deliver. “A lot of these businesses are getting to the point where there needs to be either good traction in terms of customer usage or product deployment”. “I think the rubber needs to start hitting the road a little bit and the next year will see of the proptech companies either coming through and making a success of it, but inevitably some are going to fail too.” ZPG has invested in or struck partnerships with several proptech start-ups including neighbourhood info platform PropertyDetective, repairs company Fixflo, peer-to-peer lender Landbay and online mortgages firm Trussle. James from Matterport (pictured below) said he agreed that the…
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Latest property news
Countrywide signs with ZPG for another three years of ‘partnership’
Countrywide has revealed this morning that it is to renew its listing with Zoopla and PrimeLocation for another three years for its multiple brands, which between them have nearly 1,000 branches across the UK. The new agreement starts on January 1st next year and covers both sales and lettings, although Countrywide CEO Alison Platt says she wants to maximise “the strategic benefits from their partnership”. Alison’s signature on the new contract means ZPG has passed an important test a year after Countrywide sold its remaining stake in ZPG for £29.2 million. It was one of the three key agent groups to invest in Zoopla in 2010 alongside LSL and Connells. The extent of this new partnership has not been revealed but is likely to see Countrywide leverage its listing power to access deals for some of ZPG’s other property-related businesses such including recently-acquired market analytics firm Hometrack and consumer finance portal www.money.co.uk and utilities switching portal uSwitch. “As the leading property services business across the UK, Countrywide is pleased to have cemented a refreshed and extended relationship with ZPG,” says Alison Platt. “The benefits to our Group and to our brands are significant and give us a strong platform to…
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Housing Market
So that’s why sales are slowing down! Brits now move home every 23 years
The time gap between people moving home has increased from nine to 23 years since the late 1980s as high house prices have made moving up the property ladder more expensive, research by market analyst Hometrack has revealed. This may explain why property transactions have not recovered their pre-financial crisis crash. Before the global banking meltdown approximately 120,000 properties were sold each month, a figure which is currently running at just under half that number, according to latest Land Registry figures. Scottish movements Hometrack, which was purchased by ZPG recently, says the average Brit moves home every 22.7 years. Those in Scotland are the most frequent home movers, changing address every 19.6 years followed by the South West at 20.6 years and the East of England at 20.9 years. The Welsh are the most reluctant movers, changing home every 26.8 years on average. Residents in Powys, mid-Wales only move home once every 33.1 years, the data shows. On a very local level, Midlothian in Scotland, which covers the area south of Edinburgh between East Lothian and the Scottish Borders, is where people move home the most frequently, or every 14.9 years, five years faster than the rest of the UK.…
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Latest property news
This calls for the crabs! Zoopla goes crustacean again with new TV ads
Zoopla has launched its second wave of ‘hermit crabs’ adverts to highlight the portal’s latest house moving tool for consumers, an interactive check-list. Its Zoopla Move Planner launch is also supported by a video fronted by Location, Location, Location star Phil Spencer, and the campaign will last for seven weeks across TV and radio including new 30-second and 60-second TV adverts and half-minute radio adverts. Although Gareth Helm (pictured, left), parent company ZPG’s Chief Marketing Officer, will only say it’s a “multi-million pound” spend, the campaign can’t be cheap; the portal is hoping to reach 83.5% of the UK population or 42.2 million adults. But it’s clearly the season to launch your TV ads if you’ve got the budget. Like easyProperty and Savills, both of which recently launched their TV advert campaigns, Zoopla has decided to advertise during ITV’s Sunday period drama Victoria about the early years of the queen’s reign, as well as slots during the new series of Grand Designs, X-Factor and Coronation Street. The huge advertising splurge couldn’t come at a better time – resurgent competitor OnTheMarket says it is to spend a considerable slice of the £50 million it hopes to raise from the City on…
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Latest property news
ZPG snaps up comparison website money.co.uk
UPDATE: Zoopla has today gained approval from the FCA to acquire Dot Zinc Limited, which operates the Money.co.uk website. The sale will now go through on 1st October 2017. Also, at almost the same time the FCA approval was announced, ZPG revealed that its CEO Alex Chesterman today sold 4.25 million of his shares in the company, or approximately 1% of its issued share capital. The sale of the shares, which were sold at £3.63p each, will see Chesterman cash in just under £15.5 million. Original story starts: Zoopla parent company ZPG has bought financial products comparison website Money.co.uk for £80m, prompting shares in ZPG to rise briefly by 7% after the announcement yesterday. The Cirencester-based company behind the website was set up in 2008 by CEO Chris Morling and, until now, had been one of the few independently-owned online comparison services for consumers buying financial products such as credit cards, insurance, mortgages, loans and investments. The FCA-regulated firm offers products from some 600 providers and attracts over two million visits a month to its website and has 50 staff and ten million registered users. The deal will see the company’s shareholders paid £20m in cash in December this year…
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