ZPG chief pledges to 'never go around an agent' for consumers

The managing director of ZPG Property Services says his firm will never ‘go around’ an agent in order to directly work with consumers.

“We are able to serve our agent partners so effectively precisely because of our engagement with so many consumers. But it is the services we provide to agents that I focus night and day on, and we have no interest in going around agents. Our sole interest is in serving agents as well as we can” says Mark Goddard, founder and chief executive of the Property Software Group before it was acquired by ZPGa year ago.

“If that were not the case, why would we have hundreds of people developing the best software, marketing and data products specifically for agents?” asks Goddard in an interview with Angels Media chief executive Nat Daniels.

In the same interview Goddard says that while Rightmove remains in competition with Zoopla and Primelocation in the portal sector, ZPG has diversified and is now what he calls “a multi-brand, multi-platform business” embracing Technicweb, software products Alto, Jupix, Vebra and Property File, plus data providers AdReach and Hometrack. This is in addition to other services such as Moveit and uSwitch.

Goddard also says he has not encountered industry comments suggesting ZPG had possibly over-diversified.

“Our consumers are enjoying the more diverse range of services we provide them and our agent partners are benefiting from the wide range of products we provide ... We are enjoying record levels of both consumer and agent engagement” he adds.

You can see the full interview, the latest in the Property Natter series, here.