ZPGLtd is a British company, owned by Silver Lake Partners. ZPG stands for Zoopla Property Group. It focuses on providing users with access to information such as sold house prices, area trends & statistics and current value estimates for domestic and commercial properties in the UK. Its brands include the property website Zoopla,price comparison serviceUswitch, finance comparison website Money.co.uk, personal finance content site Bankrate UK, PrimeLocation and Hometrack. Alongside these sites, Zoopla also owns several industry brands providing services to estate agents. These include Jupix, Alto, Expert Agent and Ravensworth. ZPG PLC was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by Silver Lake Partners in July 2018.
History
The company was originally founded as Zoopla in 2007 by Alex Chesterman and Simon Kain. Chesterman and Kain also founded ScreenSelect. The Zoopla website was launched in January 2008. Zoopla was backed by Accomplice, Octopus Ventures and other investors. In July 2009, Zoopla acquired property website Thinkproperty.com from the Guardian Media Group. In August 2009, Zoopla acquired the PropertyFinders Group, consisting of the websites Propertyfinders.com, Hotproperty.co.uk and UK Property Shop, from prior owners the REA Group and News International for an undisclosed sum. These businesses had combined annual revenues of £7m. In January 2011 Zoopla acquired the historic database of UK house prices HousePrices.co.uk. In October 2011, Zoopla and Digital Property Group, the subsidiary of A&N Media, operating property websites Primelocation.com, Globrix.com and FindaProperty.com, merged their respective businesses. In May 2012, Zoopla acquired property information website UpMyStreet.com. In June 2012, Zoopla and its constabularies formed Zoopla Property Group Ltd. In December 2012, Zoopla acquired property information website Globrix.com. In Spring 2013, Stephen Morana, formerly of Betfair Group Plc, was appointed new Chief Financial Officer. Zoopla's biggest shareholder, the Daily Mail and General Trust floated Zoopla on the London Stock Exchange in June 2014. In June 2015, Zoopla bought the price comparison website Uswitch. In July 2016 it was revealed that Zoopla's CEO was one of the businessmen behind one of the legal challenges to the EU referendum result. In February 2017 the company changed its name to ZPG plc. In September 2017, Zoopla purchased the financial services comparison website Money.co.uk for £140 million. In May 2018 US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners made a $2.2 Billion bid for the company. The transaction completed in July 2018.
Operations
ZPG owns a searchable directory of UK residential properties. It uses various open sources including the Royal Mail's postcode database, the HM Land Registry's data on property transactions in England and Wales, and Google maps. Based on this data, Zoopla has developed an automated valuation model, powered by Hometrack, that provides a computed valuation estimate for UK residential properties. Zoopla also allows users to claim their home or set a TemptMe price, similar to US website Zillow. Its analogue for valuing the Internet properties is DNPric.es. The accuracy of Zoopla's computed valuations is disputed.
