People Roundup: Zoopla, Zillow, Digital Classifieds Group

There have been some high-profile moves in the real estate industry in the past week. Here's the breakdown courtesy of Online Marketplaces.

Zoopla

Head of Research Gráinne Gilmore has been poached by consultancy firm Cluttons after two years with the portal.

Gilmore becomes Director of Research and Insight at Cluttons, which offers consultancy services for increasing the value of residential and commercial property across the UK. Her new role will focus on delivering market insights and updates to clients.

In a post on LinkedIn, Gilmore said she had taken a small sabbatical and that "normal service of real estate charts and insights will resume shortly" as she begins her new role.

Her previous roles include Head of UK Residential Research at Knight Frank and 11 years as a financial and economics journalist at The Times.

Zillow

Stan Humphries, the man behind Zillow's groundbreaking Zestimate home-valuation tool, has retired after seventeen years at the company.

Humphries was a 'pre-launch' employee at Zillow and held the role of chief analytics officer for the past seven years before announcing his retirement on LinkedIn this week.

Humphries' most notable achievement at Zillow was the launch of Zestimate in 2006. The tool mines data from multiple private and public sources to give a value estimation for almost every home in the United States.

Zestimate drew a million views within 48hrs of launch, and two million by day five. The tool's popularity has been widely acknowledged as one of the driving forces behind Zillow's massive market dominance in the US—with Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff commenting on Humphries retirement post that he "will forever be the creator of Zillow’s greatest product innovation, The Zestimate".

Zillow has not announced a replacement analytics officer.

Digital Classifieds Group

Cambodian property vertical Digital Classifieds Group (DCG) has appointed Lars Hougaard interim COO for an initial three-month period.

Hougaard will oversee portals realestate.com.kh and Fazwaz-kh.com.

In an update posted on his Linkedin page, Hougaard said:

"I will be helping Cambodia’s leading real estate company to scale its existing operations and find innovative ways to benefit buyers, sellers, renters, agencies and developers across the country.

"With the strong backing of DCG and under Tom O’ Sullivan and Mom Sothavatey’s leadership, I am relishing the opportunity and excited to apply my experience in the proptech industry in a different market."

Realestate.com.kh is a part of Australia-based DCG, which operates multiple portals across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. FazWaz Cambodia is a joint venture between DCG and FazWaz Group of Thailand.

Hougaard joins DCG from FazWaz's PopDeal, another real estate startup. His career history includes multiple roles at FazWaz, having spent more than a total of six years at the company since 2014.