Major coup for Zoopla as it hires top research guru from agency

One of the country’s leading housing market research experts has been poached from Knight Frank to join Zoopla.

Gráinne Gilmore - a familiar name in recent years, speaking at a string of estate agency seminars and conferences - is to become the portal’s Head of Research. 

At Knight Frank she was responsible for her highly-respected analysis of housing and construction sector markets; now she will work alongside Zoopla’s existing Research and Insight Director, Richard Donnell. 

Arguably, they now create the most authoritative residential property research team in the industry.

Commenting on her appointment, Gilmore says: “Zoopla is innovating to help agents and developers, and inform consumers on every aspect of their property journey, making it a very exciting time to join the business. There is a real opportunity to leverage Zoopla’s wide breadth of unique data through market leading analytics and data science to deliver additional value to our customers and to inform first-time buyers, home movers, renters, investors and developers.”     

Richard Donnell - who became one of the country’s foremost residential property research experts at Savills before joining Hometrack prior to its acquisition by Zoopla - says of the new team member: “Grainne is one of the UK’s leading housing market analysts and we are delighted she has joined Zoopla to expand our programme of thought leadership and market insight. Zoopla has a unique view on the market trends and the research team will continue to develop insights that help agents and developers adapt to an evolving market environment … The whole Zoopla team is thrilled to have Grainne on board.”

Prior to joining Knight Frank, Gilmore was Economics Correspondent at The Times, one of several roles she held at the paper over an 11-year period. 

Since its purchase by global private equity firm Silver Lake Partners in 2018, Zoopla has invested heavily in key hires such as Gilmore, as well as new technology, marketing and sales.

Meanwhile Gilmore is only the latest of a number of senior losses incurred by Knight Frank - last month Rentify, the tech-enabled lettings and management agency - swooped to recruit two former Knight Frank partners and a property manager from the agency.