The Business Case interview with Paul Whitehead, CEO of Zoopla

Having previously served as Chief Strategy Officer until 2018, Paul was appointed CEO of Zoopla in 2025. Paul’s wealth of digital and marketplace experience has helped propel Zoopla's goal of building the largest UK audience of motivated movers and delivering high-quality leads to their estate agent & homebuilder customers.

In this episode, we discuss Paul's career, Zoopla’s evolution from a property listings site into a data-driven audience platform, and how digital tools and AI are reshaping the housing market. We also explore challenges in the UK property sector—like slow transactions and policy uncertainty—and highlight opportunities for innovation and growth.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to the business case in partnership with the leading investor presentation hub Engage Investor. This is the podcast where we dive deep into the stories behind the UK's leading companies. I'm Mark Morrier.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

And I'm Phil Clark. And in each episode, we'll be sitting down with top business leaders to uncover their career journeys, the challenges they faced, and the insights that have shaped their success.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

We've spent our careers analyzing and investing in UK companies, meeting managements to understand the business case. And now we want to share those insights with you. We will hear about the companies our guests lead and how they are positioned for the future.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

But we also want to find out what makes these business leaders tick, the highs and the lows that they've experienced, and the lessons of management that might apply to your life.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Please remember this podcast is not investment advice, and it's for informational and educational purposes only.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Just a heads up, this uh recording of the uh conversation we had with Zuppler was actually made back in December 2025. I think it's a still greater conversation. All of it is very relevant, but there may be one or two comments that feel a little bit dated. Welcome back to the Business Case Podcast. We're here with the start of season two. Mark and I are very excited. We've got some fantastic guests, and today to kick us off, we had Paul Whitehead from Zupla. Zupla is part of a wider private equity-owned group of companies, many of which were formerly part of a business listed on the London Stock Exchange until 2018. This business was acquired for £2.2 billion by a consortium led by Silver Lake Partners. Paul had been the chief strategy officer at the group when the business was sold, and rejoined Zupla nearly a year ago as the chief executive officer. Paul, welcome. It's great to have you on the business case for our opening episode of season two. Great to be here. Great. Well, just to kick us all off, uh Paul, uh, there's a lot to discuss. Perhaps you could get our listeners up to speed. Could you give us a quick snapshot of Zupla's activities and the scale of the business?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Sure. Um thanks a lot for having me. So Zupla is a leading UK property website. It's now actually 17 years old. Um, and it's a really trusted consumer brand. Um, and we're very focused on empowering movers to make better property decisions. We have 9 million monthly users that come to the website every single month, and that generates over 1 billion annual property searches. Um, but we're much more uh than a property portal. So we now have over 5 million homeowners who are subscribers, and they are regularly tracking either their property value, demand for their uh property, and they provide effectively a pipeline of interest for our partners who we kind of work with, whether they be estate agents, whether they be house builders, or whether they be brands, you know, wanting to engage with people uh looking to move. Um, our business is primarily subscription revenue led, uh, and customers pay access to our high-value audiences, our products, uh, and our unique data. Um, and they get access to a wide range of products and services that are tailored to maximize their return on investment.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Great, thank you. Great. Well, uh, there's a lot to dive into there. Um, but before we talk about the business in detail, it'd be good just to sort of uh touch on your career journey. Um, because you've worked at a range of high growth, high expectation digital platforms such as USwitch, Kazoo, and Zupla, and each of them, I suppose, have been trying to change consumer behavior. So just sort of stepping back, what have you learned about what it takes to succeed in a digitally led business model?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

I think um always try and start with what the problem it is that you're trying to solve and what the consumer problem is that you're trying to solve. So, and you know, that's always you know what's excited me about digital businesses and in particular kind of market uh place businesses. So, you know, whether it's a kind of U-Switch, you're trying to solve the problem of navigating a sea of different tariffs, whether that's from energy suppliers, broadband suppliers, and finding offers which is kind of relevant and that works for you. At Kazoo, it was how do you make buying a car no different to any other product online? And then at Zupla, it's how do you make every move better in what is a super complex transaction? So I think it you always have to start with the consumer experience. That's really that's the hardest bit. But then you never have to forget the business model and ultimately who is paying you. So, you know, for Zupla, you know, the the learnings from that are you know, you need great products that deliver a really strong return on investment. Uh, you've got to have super effective operational uh efficiency uh within the the the core business itself. And then ultimately you've got to have brilliant customer perception because you're aiming to be their critical marketing partner. So whether that be the quality of traffic you're sending them, it could be the leads you're sending them, it depends on the marketplace. You know, you could be going so far as that you're sending them actual, you know, customers uh themselves. In our case, it's it tends to be kind of leads and prospects which are qualified in a variety of different ways.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

And you've had an interesting journey, obviously, because you you worked at Zupalo, then did some other things and then came back, and you must have had um you know an interesting perspective, uh, particularly stepping up into the the CEO role. Um, you know, what were the sort of surprises, the things that you didn't appreciate stepping up into um chief executive role?

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah, I from day one, it's that for me, it's the innate sense of responsibility I now feel for the team. Um yeah, it's I I don't know whether that's just me or whether other kind of CEOs kind of uh experienced that, but you know, I've been a COO before, commercial director, a variety of kind of different roles. Uh, and there's probably always someone else to blame or always someone else to kind of uh lean towards. But the moment I certainly feel this when you're CEO, I have ultimate responsibility for my team, uh, my stakeholders, the customers, um uh my shareholders, um, and how can I, you know, best deliver uh for each of those constituent kind of parts. You know, that that I think is is the biggest difference. You know, the actual functions that kind of sit within that, you know, is often depends how big the company is, but there's often kind of teams that can kind of support you for that. Um I think the other the difference is is just how do you give people the broader kind of perspective and get focus in the right areas, but at the same time, you know, trying to be strategic and think about kind of the future direction, not just about tomorrow.

unknown 7:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Great. Well, let's uh let's dive into some of those areas, uh, Paul. I mean, in in your opening uh commentary about the business, you know, you talked about Zoopla sitting in, you know, somewhere between a a property portal, you're a data business, you've you you referenced a huge number of data points that are coming into the group. You you're a marketing platform, you know, you you're a significant lead generation business. Yeah. What business are you in, really? What what's the real kind of value creation proposition for you?

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah, it's it's a good question. I think you know, we're a today we're in all of those. Yeah. But we are definitely moving towards and leaning towards being an audience data kind of business. Um, you know, our the the core of where our focus is at the moment is how do we engage with high-intent kind of o homeowners using our proprietary valuation data that's been built up over the last kind of 17 years, this incredible brand we've got, you know, this is HomeTrack. Um we actually use our own data. We do work with Home Track. Uh, you know, they're one of the other companies kind of in the group, but uh, you know, Zupla actually, when Zupla launched, it only launched it launched with this valuation models. It didn't have property listings. Right, okay. Uh it launched with this thing called Z Estimate. Uh and so, you know, that people came to Zupla to start with to that was a differentiator against, you know, there's lots of other property portals kind of around at the time. So, yes, look, we we definitely use um home track data, we use our own data, and then how that links through to kind of uh demand and kind of listings, but you know, homeowners is kind of the core, and you know, we've I think we've been successful at building up that base of kind of homeowners. You know, a year ago we were about 3.8 million, we're now over five million.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

And they give us huge richness of kind of data as long as there's an effective value exchange, back to the point I made about consumer experience. Um we've added new features uh for homeowners this year, such as now you can uh see how much demand there is for your home if you change the price of it. And actually now, if you send a what we call a valuation lead, if you you know want an agent to come and value your property because you're thinking of selling, if you then go on to list that property, will then allow you to see how your property is performing on kind of Zupler. You know, how many views did you have on your listing last week? And you know, it's all part of kind of informing homeowners to a better kind of property decisions and you know, back to the original point of make it making the move easier. But we're definitely shifting, I would say, away from a traffic-oriented business to an audience data business.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

And what where where do the how how do the revenue opportunities diff differ between those two models? Because I I'm not sure, I'm clear in my own mind sort of whether this is sort of just Wordsmith, yeah, or whether there are fundamental differences to being a lead generation business versus a uh audience business.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yeah, sure. So look, if you look at the property marketplaces 101, effectively you are paying a fee per month to list your properties on the platform, could be ours, could be someone else's, uh, and you are getting people who are interested in buying that property or renting that property kind of in return. Yep. That's kind of it. So, yes, we still that's why I said at the start, you know, we're in all kind of three or four of those kind of buckets. Where we are shifting towards is when someone is looking to sell their property, how do we engage that consumer and then send that lead or that prospect to an agent, yep, to a builder, uh, and then they pay us in return for that kind of lead. So that's kind of you know one iteration of it. And then, you know, the third iteration of it is with brands, uh, and we work with banks, we work with mortgage brokers, we work with furniture brands who, if you think about in that kind of moving kind of window, which effects is probably about a six or seven month kind of window, there's audience signals that we can kind of get from that that we want to contextualize and pull that in front of brands and kind of partners. Got it. And so that's a a third kind of revenue stream.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Yeah, okay, no, that's much clearer. Thank you. And then uh, I mean, in you just touched on it a minute ago that there's obviously been a quite quite a product evolution journey for you as a platform and as a business. Can you can you just talk about maybe you know how your background from a product and strategy point of view has has influenced the product roadmap that you have at at Zupla, and then maybe kind of a few of the things that you've launched more recently, and then maybe some things to come.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Um, look, I think this year um, you know, Zupla's got a kind of a great set of kind of uh products, and I'll I'll talk about some of the things that uh we've been doing it in a second, but this year has been a bit more kind of transformational because Zupla was part of, as you said in your introduction, this broader kind of group of companies. And in some areas there've been deeper integration with some of those companies uh than kind of others, but this year has been all about establishing Zupla as a standalone marketplace business. Um and so you know, we've integrated commercial teams, we've integrated kind of product teams, um, and so we've really had to focus on the core, you know, marketplace and establishing that first. We've also focused on, you know, this hidden gem, you know, when I came back of this base of kind of homeowners which hadn't been kind of monetized before, uh doubling down and kind of investing on that to really kind of grow it. And then the third leg of that is making some tech team investments to make the platforms kind of more AI ready, you know, having spotted the trend that was kind of coming, you know, what can we do to turn, in some cases, 17-year-old legacy kind of uh platforms into ones which are ripe for uh for today. Um and I think the learnings with the base are how do you balance? And it's always a constant tightrope at times between consumers and customers. Um, so getting those consumers back to that consumer experience point to continue to come to you, those nine million that come every month and engage with you, and then customers, i.e. those that are paying uh paying you. I think Zupla perhaps had shifted a bit too far towards the consumer end and not forgotten, but uh you know deprioritised uh the customer kind of focus. So that's been one of the big kind of areas of kind of balance uh this year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Okay, and then you touched on AI um uh a minute ago there, uh Paul. There's obviously so much being talked about AI in terms of you know new business models, operational efficiency, um, you know, this is the golden future for for lots of people. How how practical from your perspective has the um AI opportunity been? Because you know, you have a lot of customer interaction, you've got a huge amount of data, I'm sure there's a data mining opportunity. So can you can you just sort of bring it to life for us from an AI perspective?

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah, certainly. We certainly take the view that leveraging those data kind of insights is the key to kind of the future and the homeowner base that we're building and kind of growing is the foundation for that. Um, you know, when I was just talking about a kind of the business model, historically marketplace businesses have relied on traditional web search and SEO to win and drive traffic to the site. Yep. You have as many listings as possible and then you turn that traffic, blend that to the listings, and you try and drive as many leads as you possibly can. Try and give the most efficient source machine. Correct, exactly. But you know, we're seeing already that AI is disrupting traditional search. And so, you know, our belief is if you rely on listings only, then you might be challenged.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Um, and look, you may have seen the recent market reaction to Write Moves announcements in this space. Yeah, you know, I think they've kind of recognized that and are needing to kind of invest um in some of those kind of AI tools and kind of services. Um, you know, back to our belief, you know, we think if you invest in homeowners, it's an example of how you can leverage data. Uh, it's proprietary data uh to us, and that enables us to unlock real value in the future. But you know, when it comes to search, and you know, we're doing some testing on our app with freeform kind of text search on that. It replaces filters uh for AI powered search sessions, and we're seeing some you know really interesting results in you know, it's teaching us in terms of what new filters to add, because traditionally you type in, you know, I'm looking for a two-bedroom flat in uh near Old Street and uh with a balcony maybe, and there's filters that enable you to do that. Whereas with threeform, you just type that all in, and what it's taught is actually there's filters which we currently don't have that we're going to have, and travel time is a good example of that. But it's relatively early days, though the proportion of kind of traffic from uh the AIR platforms is relatively small, but look, it it's growing, and we're tuned to it, and you know, we're we're definitely going to lean into it. I mean, what what what you've described?

SPEAKER_02 17:29

I don't want to put words into your mouth, but it sounds to me what you've just described is it is taking your existing business model fundamentally and making it more efficient, more effective, rather than a fundamental reshaping of the business. Is that would that be a fair characterization today, or do you see it differently?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

I think when it comes to search, I think that's probably fair. I think when it comes to homeowners, though, I do see it slightly more revolutionary. Because back to my point around how marketplaces have operated in the past, which has been to go and acquire that traffic from Google, Meta, um TV advertising and the like. You know, we see today of all of the traffic that comes to Zupla, about a quarter of it now is coming directly from our homeowners. Right. It's not linked to listings. We're not having to go out and acquire that traffic coming back. They want to come back and engage with kind of Zupla. Yeah. And then in return, they're giving us all of this kind of data which we can then go on to kind of monetize. So I think there is a bit more of a fundamental shift kind of happening, but look, nevertheless, the business model is still pretty much core on that original kind of marketplace proposition. Yeah. And that's you know, we're evolving.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

So that's the shift from the traffic-led business to an audience-led business closely. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

But in terms of collecting that data, I know you've got this uh interesting product called My Home where you can get a monthly update of what's happening to your property price. And I suppose you know the journey when somebody's deciding to sell their house, it's not just a kind of binary, right? You know, there's a there's a lead up towards it. And you know, there must be ways, you know, the behavior of people uh on that product and what they're asking. You you know, AI must help you sort of think, well, actually, there's a very good chance this person in three or four months' time is thinking about selling their house. Therefore, that's a valuable potential lead for the agent.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Couldn't have said it better myself. But yeah, that's exactly right. Um, and you know, homeowners who are uh tracking the value of their home, and then if they start to play around with some of the demand tools, yeah, we know that they then go on to perform at a greater proportion than someone who isn't a homeowner on the core site. So, you know, I'll give you one stat. They are two and a half times more likely to perform what we would class as a high performing kind of action. So they may save a property, they may put some details into a mortgage calculator, they may send uh a lead uh about looking at a kind of future kind of property. So you know, by investing in kind of homeowners, it not only has the benefit of reducing marketing costs over time, it also has the benefit of what we would say powering the core marketplace flywheel and getting those signals from them, which and there's large language models kind of sitting kind of behind that, um, as to how we drive the business forward.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Yeah. It's really interesting how it's evolved um, you know, over the last generation. Because I I remember as a fan manager investing in companies like Johnson Press and Trinity Mirror, yeah, and they basically had monopolies of regional newspapers in towns, and every year the price just went and the agent had to pay it because there was no other that was the funnel, right? Yep, of course, no other roots of market. But as uh obviously you replaced that in terms of classifieds, and now it's gone to the next level of being embedded in the workflow of the agent. So, you know, given the agents are at the center of this, you know, what what do they tell you in terms of what they want today and going forwards to make their life easier and to to generate more revenue?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Yeah, I think um I would say even until recently, that model which you described of the traditional newspaper classifieds, massive kind of listings, get you know, leads or telephone calls as it you know was then or walk-ins as a result, has fun fundamentally kind of not changed, but it's definitely shifting. Uh it goes back to my point. If you I think if you rely on listings alone, I just don't think that's good enough now. Um, you know, it it's it's a tough market out there. It's still a very fragmented market out there. I think there are of the 15 to 20,000 or so kind of estate agents, let's call it fifteen thousand roughly, six thousand of them just own a single branch.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

There's only nine companies that own more than a hundred branches. So it's incredibly fragmented and Yeah, competition is high, you know, when it comes to kind of local areas. They're looking for more value for money and they're looking for products to your point in terms of what you know where we're embedded in kind of their workflows. You know, how can they engage with platforms like us to help them grow their business? Yeah. It's not a simple case as just, okay, send us 100 leads this month, we'll sort through them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

That's that's tough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so pricing is a it's an interesting topic. I I think there is a difference between pricing and value. And I think that's what the regional newspaper industry probably forgot, and then just putting out the price of and obviously there's a lot of um, it's a live topic in your sector at the moment with your big competitor. Um, you know, how do you, you know, how do you think about pricing power versus value for money and kind of combine that with you know what you've got in the pipeline in terms of um, you know, more services that are going to be useful to the agent?

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah, I well certainly don't think about kind of pricing power. We certainly, and we've you know, back to where we've been focused this year on what I've called kind of the marketplace kind of basics and the shift a bit more to be kind of customer or partner focused, you've got to focus on you know return on investment. If you go back to the, you know, our mantra, you know, want to be a critical and effective kind of mark uh marketing partner, you know, how do we, you know, in terms of the spend that our partners spend with us, how do we demonstrate that they're getting really good kind of return on in investments on that, you know, um, and we're doing that, and there are some significant variances from postcode to postcode, high street to high street. And I think, you know, look, we as a number two have to work a bit harder on that. Um, but we're going hyper-local uh and kind of recognizing, you know, what's our performance on uh you know Leonard Street, you know, what's the market's performance on Leonard Street? Because actually the property prices or someone's performance on that street may be quite different, particularly in London, maybe quite different to one two streets away. Yeah. So, you know, how can you be a lot more effective and demonstrating, you know, the value that we deliver? And I think actually in that shift to you know being a bit more customer focused, I think we'd forgotten that we have to kind of work hard at that and demonstrating kind of Zupla's value kind of in in return, particularly when it's such a fragmented customer base.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Yeah. So is it is lead generation still the number one ask for for your customers in terms of the agents?

SPEAKER_01 24:35

It does vary in terms of given how fragmented the base is. I would say some of the larger customers still like the lead volume.

unknown 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

And they're just a bit more kind of sophisticated and they've got big call centres and they'll sift through it. They're perhaps a bit more sophisticated in database management that a lead today may not be in the market, but they may well be in kind of three months' time. So look, we've still got to focus on kind of delivering volume. But for the long tail and the vast majority of our customers, definitely more kind of quality focused. And also it's not just about what we would call applicant leads. So someone looking to buy a home, it you go back to how does an estate agent, you know, make their money, they make their money by someone coming to them to list their home with them. That's where they get their commission. So, you know, back to our focus on homeowners, that's all about how do we drive kind of greater valuation leads. But I do think business models and platforms which rely on just a fire hose of leads and putting up prices unilaterally without demonstrating that return on value, that's not the game I want to be in.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Just to jump in a second, just on the on the kind of the share of pie, um, I guess what Mark was uh was um talking about earlier was that there's obviously been this fundamental shift of value away from uh classified print to to to businesses like Zoopler. In order for you to grow, it's a really basic question, but for you in order for you to continue to grow, what are the part what other value pools are you tapping into in order to bring more revenue into you know to what's your yours an attractive consumer model proposition?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah, so there is um there is still broader growth um which kind of exists. I think actually if you compare percentage of marketing spent on property platforms and portals today compared to when it was all-on-print, there's still some headrooms to kind of go there.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Um and you know, property values are increasing. Uh, yes, I recognize it's tough for agents in terms of kind of commissions, which are kind of relatively kind of flat-lined around the sort of the one and a half percent level. But look, there's still some uh uh growth there to come. But also, you know, I see some market share gains uh to be had in terms of um, you know, where we're doubling down our focus on kind of valuation leads for, you know, for example, there's not really been a business model which has been established so far. So, you know, we you know, we would urge all of our partners to think, you know, as they look across all of their marketing channels, um, you know, where are they getting the greater return on investment and value for money?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

I guess if you think longer term and the wider sort of house purchasing journey, you know, elements of it are still pretty analog, quite sort of old-fashioned, you know, very clunky, you know, from kind of conveyancing to you know, planning and you know, all the kind of services. Do you see you you're gonna have a bigger role there in terms of being the force that kind of brings down the cost digitization? Um, you know, are the the kind of revenue pools opening up longer term for you?

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Yeah, I think so. Um, and look, it's been one of the big things which has surprised me. I guess maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but in coming back to kind of Zupla, if you look at um, you know, how back to that point about how does an agent make their money, you know, they get it from on the commission when a property kind of sells. So effectively they are for sales, you know, rentals uh uh different, but they're in a stock turn kind of business. Yeah, the time it has taken from offer made on a property to completion in the seven years I've been away from this business has got longer. Yeah. And just think about all the digital innovation that we've seen, you know, A high, blockchain, everything. I mean, it's ridiculous. It really is. Um, the good news is there there are some moves underway. Uh the demand is there from platforms like us and right move. Uh it's definitely there from kind of uh agents in the industry. I was, you know, with the the CEO of the the largest agent last week talking about this thing. And I think finally the government have kind of recognized this. So consultations have started to do this, but it's a very kind of fragmented journey. I think a lot comes back to kind of data. How do you make that data more available, more kind of visible? So if we can do a good job of that, you know, I talked earlier about, you know, how do we show someone's uh performance once the property is is live and kind of in the market, there's no reason why we can't show progression through the chain on that. So I think, you know, we've got the consumer kind of eyeballs, so definitely kind of see a role to play there. I think if a version of you know what did exist before was, if you remember, material information packs, yeah. So how do you bring the information kind of up front to educate kind of the consumer so there's there's no surprises, uh, definitely kind of advocate for a uh a version of that, providing that the other constituent parts in that journey, whether that be lenders or whether that be conveyancers, can rely on that data. There's no point in just putting that data there if then they're gonna do all the searches again. Yeah, exactly. Um, which was a bit of the challenge kind of uh the last time around. So we definitely advocate, you know, putting that information next to kind of every kind of single listing kind of on the site. Yeah, we we're all about kind of transparency and you know, how do you just make that move better?

SPEAKER_02 30:29

It does feel like it's such an antiquated process that it that it's ripe for for efficiency and and technology.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

It is. It just needs I totally agree. It just needs some of the constituent parts to think broader rather than serving their own interests.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

What uh you're not going to name names, but which parts of the value chain do you think are the most resistant to that fundamental change? Conveyancers.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I think, but that's a little bit the nature of the sector. I think look, banks will get there, they're they're open to it. You know, what why wouldn't they want to kind of make the let the lending process kind of simpler? That's going to drive operational efficiencies uh down to kind of their own kind of balance sheets. But a bit like estate agency, you know, conveyances, it's a kind of very fragmented market. So, and there's some great conveyancing firms out there, um, you know, which are starting to think that things in a kind of digital kind of way. I also think it actually starts as well with uh the consumer back to that stat, about a third of all transactions from offer don't actually go on to complete for that transaction and make them back into kind of the market. So it's how do you set valuation expectations kind of up front? How do you set the total cost of kind of moving home and educating consumers rather than perhaps just punting your kind of property out there and seeing what kind of happens?

SPEAKER_02 31:56

I know there was a piece in the uh FT last week about the Lloyd's CEO talking a lot about some initiatives that they've they've got underway in terms of digitization, tokenization of deposits, which was all a little bit over my head, but um that there's clearly appetite for driving efficiency, and I guess from in a couple of years.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Yeah, and we we work closely with them actually. Um, and you know, we're we're kind of on that journey with them and want to kind of work to kind of help that because it it just it benefits everyone. There's there's there's pent-up demand for moving house, and either it's you know we may come onto it in terms of property taxes and the like, which is a barrier, is one, but also just the pain of the transaction is certainly another.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Well, you you've teed me up nicely there, Paul. Um I mean, maybe let's talk about the housing market more broadly. I mean, uh I it's obviously a national pastime for us Brits to talk a lot about house prices, housing market, and uh I'm sure you you you're the man with all the with all the insights and all the data, but there'd been so much talk about all sorts of changes um around the bud from the budget in terms of stamp duty planning, you know, various other taxes. Seems like it was a sort of relatively muted outcome for the industry. So just curious on what was your take from the from the budget uh for the housing market, particularly.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Yeah, I think you put that very diplomatically. I'd call it more of a damp squib, to be honest. Uh the biggest challenge with it all was just the length of that window of kind of speculation, which is just totally unnecessary. And you know, we as you say, you know, we see leading it kind of indicators, it really clogged up, you know, people bringing properties to kind of market in that. You know, they didn't know would there be shocks to kind of mortgage rates, yeah. They didn't know were they going to uh maybe there's an opportunity the stamp duty would be abolished, or so yeah, it wasn't it wasn't great at all. What we do expect though, and and look, we can delve down into the uh the data kind of more, but properties priced between half a million pounds and two million pounds were the ones which totally kind of uh got clogged up. So um we expect probably to about 200,000 homes to come to market in the next kind of few months and kind of unlock that. Because as I said before, the demand uh and the desire to kind of sell, you know, is is there.

SPEAKER_03 34:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Uh you know, we've got the largest sales pipeline in four years since the pandemic. There's 350,000 homes available for kind of sales. So the demand and the supply and the appetite is there. Uh, it's just a shame that all that kind of lead up and kind of speculation, um, you know, if we talk about kind of productivity kind of for the UK, almost came to a halt. Yeah. Uh, you know, that's kind of it, you know, in housing. But yeah, I think look, more broadly, we're very supportive of reform to property taxes. There was uh uh, you know, one of our guys was involved in the Treasury Select Committee in the lead up to kind of the budget talking about property taxes and stamp duty. You know, stamp duty is very outdated, 60% of stamp duty is paid in London and the South East, and we're seeing suppressed transactions in these areas. Yeah. So if you want to drive productivity, you've really got to kind of focus on it. So look, I think it's very easy to kind of criticise. Definitely want to get behind um, you know, UK PLC and supportive um of any kind of changes that uh the government kind of might make there. So, but yeah, we want to focus on the positive and get Britain moving again.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Presumably you're gonna have a role in the valuation of the um properties above two million pounds within the years and pension tax. And you know, how did the government appreciate how difficult that's going to be?

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Uh I don't know whether he appreciates how difficult it's going to be and the uh uh emotions that uh it's gonna create uh and maybe the changes of behaviour that it is going to create. But look, you know, we're certainly ready and waiting for a phone call or an email in terms of the valuable data that we can provide them.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

I mean, not to go down this rabbit hole particularly, but given this is a a new government initiative, you know, there can't be many people that they're gonna phone and and want to get that help and support from. I mean, have you really not had a conversation with the government about how this is going to be implemented?

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Yeah, so look, as I as I mentioned, um, yeah, we are engaged with government on two fronts at the moment. There was the Treasury Select Committee around property taxes, and there's also this broader consultation around how do you improve the home buying and kind of selling experience. Um yeah, so we have kind of good in inroads into kind of government there, and we'll be, you know, progressing those conversations in terms of using uh you know valuable data around property evaluations over the last 17 years that we can kind of help. I just think you've just got to get on with it though.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Well, I mean it it just creates uncertainty, and uh a consistent theme from all of our guests um uh through the podcast has always just been we just need to know what what playing field we're on, and then we can get on with it. Uh it's just not it's the uncertainty that kills people. Um, and just just maybe just having a bit of fun about the housing market and how you're seeing the market, the data that you've got. Um, I guess a few questions if I can. You know, what what signals, what data do you see that really is kind of quite predictive versus just noise, would be kind of quite interested in. And then just secondly, kind of in terms of where we are in the cycle, 1.1, 1.2 million housing transactions a year. It's sort of we seem to have been in that range. I mean, there's obviously been a few peaks and troughs over the last few years. COVID impacted things, the the mini budget impacted things, but sort of where where do you think we are from a sort of cyclical perspective?

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Yeah, so maybe let's unpick a couple of those. So, in terms of data kind of indicators that we look at, um, look, clearly we're seeing what we would call kind of top of funnel kind of property searches and kind of lead lead scent. I would say that is pretty resilient. Um, you know, we've seen it in terms of properties listed this year. Um, you know, one of the big data measures I always look at is number of people claiming their homes each week. Um, you know, that is still kind of growing uh significantly. So there's definitely a desire um there. So that I think that's kind of healthy. In terms of economic indicators, it always used to be kind of interest rates, but I think you know, the shift towards fixed rates and you know, more tests by the banks on ability to pay that slightly softens kind of uh the leading indicator in terms of actual housing kind of transactions. So, you know, more material changes, it's employment rates, probably. But you know, that takes slightly longer to kind of flow through. Then I think in terms of you know volumes themselves, you know, the long run trend is actually 1.2 million sales. Yep. You know, we're uh we're about that. Um as you mentioned during the pandemic, it spiked to one and a half million and then hits a trough of one million. Yeah, but we're back on that kind of long-term trend now of around kind of you know 1.2 million. And you know, back to the point we made around kind of stamp duty, affordability is definitely a constraint, um, particularly in southern England now, uh, where average buyers are paying somewhere between two and three percent on stamp duty.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

And are you seeing, I mean, do you get a lot of insights in terms of the lender behaviour in terms of affordability testing and some of their risk appetite, or is that just sort of one step removed from insights testing?

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Slightly one step removed. Uh other parts of the broader kind of group definitely see that. You know, Home Track has uh deep relationships with all of the banks. You know, one of the other businesses in the group is called Mojo Mortgages, who we you know partner with. They're a digital first mortgage broker. They, you know, they definitely kind of see that. You know, where we try and focus on is the demand from consumers to send that to banks or kind of mortgage brokers uh for them to kind of convert. And again, you know, that's where you know one of our growth areas is you know, that base of five million kind of homeowners, we're getting signals from them. You know, they give us their mortgage data, right? So the rye point they perhaps want to, or we think uh they could remortgage for it to be kind of cost effective to do so, we can kind of put that in front of them.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

And that's one of the products you've got today.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Yeah, yeah. Okay, interesting. I mean, uh and maybe just a final question about the housing market more broadly. We touched on it earlier. I mean, the the the housing market is a pretty critical component of UK economy. Um it's been a bit stuck recently, which is which has clearly had an impact. You know, get getting a faster, free moving market, more dynamic market is clearly going to be a good thing for UK economy, economic growth. Yeah, what would be what would be some of the sort of two or three things that if you had a wish list um we could see coming through over the next you know few years from a government policy perspective or from a sort of just reform perspective?

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Yeah, look, I think definitely that uh the buying and selling transaction um and doing some moves to make that more certain uh for consumers um uh through that kind of process, because that would give consumers more confidence to kind of list their properties. Yeah, I actually you know, think there's there's a slight kind of imbalance at the moment, and you you sit uh you see it in terms of you know, we're an aging population sat on you know some larger kind of properties, perhaps willing to kind of downsize, but because of the taxes kind of involved, yeah. You could almost say, you know, should there be a uh a m um a truth for kind of a three-year period to amnesty? Exactly, to try and just rebalance things a bit because there is kind of a lot of kind of pent-up kind of the equity release markets on its knees, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

Uh and I think some support, you know, for the home builders, there's this target of one and a half kind of million homes to be built by the end of kind of this parliament. They've got no chance in hell of kind of hitting that at the at the moment, unfortunately, because you know, the cost of delivering homes has risen faster than sales values. You know, cost has risen for the last two years up about 20%, whereas sales values are up one percent. Yep. Um, so it's squeezing the viability of kind of development. So I'm not saying a return to kind of help to buy, but you know, some kind of stimulus to uh unlock some of that demand would make sense.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

Yeah, and I guess the problem for the house builders is that they've already bought the land bank with a certain assumed margin on the product. Yeah, so they're a bit stuffed. Yeah, yeah. It's a difficult position to unlock. Yeah, okay, good.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Good. And just finally for me, um, you know, Zuba is quite an interesting company in that it's operated in both public markets and now owned by uh private equity. And you know, how would you characterize the difference between the two? Because you've experienced both, because I know private equity sometimes gets a bad rap and has a kind of focus on short term. But you know, what's been your experience?

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Yeah, it's interesting. I actually think at the heart, I don't think it actually impacts the day-to-day running of the business. Um, but certainly in my role as a CEO in a privately owned business, it just probably means I can spend more of my time and energy on customers, product innovation, and and kind of the business itself. I, you know, I have shareholder management, but certainly not to the same extent as you do in the public business. You know, my role when I was laster kind of Zoopla was slightly different. So I spent a lot of my time with kind of analysts and uh shareholders trying to, you know, explain the strategy. And and look, not least, if you want to change the focus of your strategy, you know, that was particularly uh acute my you know, my last time around, because we were uh uh building the business through kind of MA going into adjacencies, a price comparison into. Data and kind of software, uh, it's a lot of heavy lifting to do that in kind of a public market. You know, much easier to kind of do uh in a private business. And you know, look, we saw with Wright Move's recent capital markets day trying to explain a slight change in strategy. We can argue whether that's right or wrong, but the challenge that that then had on kind of the share price immediately immediately after. You know, we'd made the decision to invest in the uh platform on AI investments 18 kind of months ago. You know, our board and investors were highly supportive and we just got on with it.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Yeah. Yeah, like public company is like trying to want to do something strategic, it's like trying to change the tires on a moving car. Exactly. It's very difficult. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

But also there's definitely a difference there, I think, between the UK and the US. Yes. Uh in that when, you know, to stereotype it, US very kind of growth focused will kind of absorb some of those changes much better than uh a UK focus, which is you know, more dividend, um, you know, margin focused type uh mentality. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Great. Well, um, it's been a fantastic discussion, uh, Paul. We've kind of come towards the end of our time here and uh just really appreciate your time. It's been great having you on. Uh, just a couple of things just to wrap us up, just for a little bit of fun to finish off. Uh, a couple of quick fire questions if I can. Uh, what what's the one thing you wish every home buyer understood and they currently don't?

SPEAKER_01 45:25

A proper appreciation of the value of their home and the costs involved in kind of moving. If I go back to that point, you know, how do you drive kind of more productivity for kind of the UK? Let's try and get it that, you know, let's kind of reduce down that third of all transactions that don't go through them. But I think that would be uh, you know, a data point that I'd love consumers to kind of uh understand better.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

I wish I'd asked you this earlier, but what what what is it that means that a third of transactions, you know, don't complete?

SPEAKER_01 45:57

What is there a like what are the two or three things that yeah, it could be that they've gone through the mortgage process and uh the affordability checks that have happened, you know, haven't gone through and they've not lined things up. It could be uh that the price they're asking for people then hope to kind of chip on the price kind of later. People aren't kind of prepared to do that. There could be uh not having realized you've got a restricted covenant on one part of the land. Um so it's just going in with that kind of eyes open. Like, good, good. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Uh secondly, what what's the what's the one number that you check every morning and why why do you check that?

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Yeah, it's it's we I mean, we're not a day-to-day transactional business, you know. 80% of our revenues are monthly kind of subscriptions, but uh look, I definitely check it's a very um fast-evolving market, you know. New agents, there's no real kind of barriers to entry or kind of exit. So new agents are arriving every day, so I definitely check uh new business sales. And the and the other one is how many homeowners did we add kind of yesterday? Yeah. Because I know that's kind of the future of our business and where that's successful come from.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

I mean, you said five million is where you're at today. I mean that that it's quite a good penetration rate, and it's obviously come up quite a lot the last 12 months. So clearly, clearly doing a good thing for your customers. And then final question just is what does the business look like in 2030? And what do you think will be the biggest surprise to the market as we sit here today?

SPEAKER_01 47:26

I think uh you know, we're definitely seeing some really good momentum at the moment, not only in kind of the core business, but in that kind of homeowner growth. Uh, we want to be playing a role in the majority of moves in the UK. So whether that's someone sending a rental lead, a vendor lead because they're interested in selling their property or looking to buy or a remortgage uh kind of lead. And you know, we believe the trust and the transparency in this brilliant brand that we have uh puts us in a great position.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

Great.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

Well, Paul, thank you very much. Thanks very much indeed. Really enjoyed it. Okay, well, Mark, Paul Whitehead from Zupla, kicking us off. Here we are, we're back for season two. What did you think of uh Paul and the discussion?

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Yeah, really interesting. You know, Zupla is a fascinating business just operating in a um in an industry where there's just so much digital change uh taking place. But you know, a couple of observations that really struck me. Um the first was you know how much pent-up demand there is in the UK housing market and you know this whole torturous budget um process and kind of you know you know, you know, the government being quite gummed up has just created this pipeline of houses that need to be sold. Now you talk about 200,000 homes going to come to the market, the largest sales pipeline um they've had for four years. So I thought that was a really interesting insight. I I guess the second one was just um we're still at the early stages of digital in this market. And just the wider food chain of conveyancing and planning um and searches is incredibly analog, paper-based, very clunky. And there's enormous opportunity there for companies like Zupla um as that as those processes um you know start to go digital. Anyway, what did you think?

SPEAKER_02 49:13

No, I mean I I I agree with you, and I think the stat that Paul gave us in terms of you know from exchange to completion is longer today than when he was in the business seven years ago, despite all of the tech innovation that there's been in the market, was was kind of slightly depressing for you know for somebody that wants to see UK PLC or UK economy be successful. Uh that I I felt Paul was maybe keeping his cards close to his chest because with with the amount of insights they have as a business, with the data they have, with the traffic they have, you know, the fact that they've got five million homeowners paying them a monthly subscription or annual subscription, it felt to me that there must be so many other pockets of business opportunity. And, you know, I I completely understand why he wouldn't want to uh reveal it all, but it it would it does make me think that there's a lot of opportunity for Zoopla and other businesses like this to kind of really get more fingers in more pies because you're right, that there's so many layers and components in the housing transaction process that there is there is so much opportunity for for consolidation. I think um I think taking a step back about about just Paul as the CEO, I I thought you know he he was very engaging. I really liked how he he kept coming back to ROI. I don't I don't think we hear enough from CEOs about fundamentally driving return on investment. Um so I kind of liked that as a characteristic. And I think it's always good when you're in any kind of consumer-facing business, always to be reminded that you've got to put the consumer first. And I definitely felt um from the conversation we had with Paul today that um that is certainly how Zupla thinks about their business, their operating model. Any other key takeaways, Mark?

SPEAKER_00 51:02

No, no, I think that were that they were the main ones. So I hope you enjoyed um the conversation with Paul Whitehead um from Zupla on the business case. We've got lots more interesting uh chief executive guests coming up over the next few weeks, and I hope you will join us.