Zoopla boss wants to ‘speed up sales’ by putting all property details online

Zoopla plans to speed up the property buying and selling process with the introduction of its new My Home website, which allows homeowners to view and edit a page dedicated to their property, and track other homes they might want to buy – even if they are not on the market.

Powered by Hometrack, each address in the UK will now have a homeowner hub – that is about 29 million unique portals providing unparalleled insights about every home in the UK.

Zoopla’s CEO, Charlie Bryant, told the Mail on Sunday: “Just over one million people move home every year, but that pales into insignificance compared to the ten million people who are active on property portals every month.

“If we can help equip them with the information they need to turn that aspiration into a transaction, then that will play a massive part in driving this industry forward.”

Homeowners will be able to claim their own “My Home Profile”, subject to validation; a unique dashboard that will aggregate key information relating to the property – from home value to area stats. It will also monitor ‘marketing temperature’, notifying the owner when their home is becoming “hot property” based on buyer demand,  with a view to driving market momentum and stimulating greater activity.

Homeowners will be able to update the platform with photos and renovation improvements – assembling all the essential information ahead of putting the property in the market, and more importantly for Zoopla and its agents – providing a reason to keep them engaged with the website year after year, throughout their ownership.

By increasing consumer engagement, Zoopla aims to monitor behaviour patterns to identify “warm prospects” even before many people are aware that they potentially want to move home, “and that is where the new digital prospects in technology kicks in”.

‘The Digital Prospector’ tool aims to make accurate predictions and identify ‘warm’ leads, providing agents with notifications as and when a property could be about to come available for sale or to let, giving them a chance to pitch for an instruction.

Once an agent has been instructed, the vendor’s ‘My Home’ file will be unlocked, making it easier to produce a listing using Zoopla’s ‘listings’ tool kit.

‘My Search’, the consumer search platform, provides users with a bespoke dashboard with real time alerts, search features and a ‘watch list’, allowing them to tag properties they are interested in ‘on and off market’, prioritising the ones they are most interested in, helping to provide agents with high quality applicants.

The ‘Progression Portal’, part of ‘Mission Control’ is the final element in Zoopla’s ‘ecosystem’, allowing the agent, buyers and vendor to interact with one another. The instant status updates provided will allow all parties to track progress and communicate with conveyers and solicitors, with everyone involved in the sale having access to their relevant section on the portal, helping to create a smother process through to completion – at least that is the aim.

Bryant said: “This site will provide encyclopedic knowledge of everything a homeowner, or prospective homeowner, needs to know about the house they own, or would like to buy. We will also let people track properties they are interested in, so they can come back to them time and again, and see what is happening in the neighbourhood.

He added: “Currently it takes around 14 weeks on average in the UK to sell a home,’ Bryant says. ‘We need to speed up this process and in the years to come, My Home, with other Zoopla products such as those enabling faster mortgage underwriting, will play a role in this.”

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4 Comments

  1. Dick Value

    There’s big data then there’s this.

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  2. Mrlondon52

    You have to admire the ambition. While over at RM Towers they are terrified of doing anything which reduces their stonking margin.

    Whatever you think of Zoopla – and at times I’ve disliked them and their account management was atrocious – you have to recognise they are taking the bull by the horns, or trying to at least. I like the sound of the ‘marketing temperature’ feature

     

     

     

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    1. Robert_May

      They are in a difficult place, the duopoly is broken so running a pacemaker; setting  how fast and how quick Rightmove can increase their subscriptions isn’t something that keeps them in a comfortable place. they have to compete properly with Rightmove and On the Market and Boomin and the fleet footed challengers who are offering services they offer without the faff of having to be on a portal [Sprift, Homesearch, Dataloft] Suddenly they have to innovate and be agent focussed.
       
      I’m not sure  Zoopla can claim this is  territory  as a USP, this stuff is live and working on a far more intimate level already and has been for 6 months- This is ZPG catching up with innovation rather than them innovating. This is them keeping up with change and challenge.
       
      What they will find is it  it can be a value add but it’s not an additional service and it’s not adding stickiness.

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  3. Woodentop

    The data is only as good as the shelf-life, has always been the stumbling block and a ‘mind set change’ for voluntary participation by the consumer. Want to know everything, as long as its not their data.

     

    So what is regarded as ‘good’ time scale to sell a property?

     

    Is this really going to speed up the process, a question for the legal’s in conveyancing?

     

    The pitch seems to be more in PR for Zoopla customers to use the site with something new after the decades of stagnant evolution.

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