Overview:
Zoopla plc is one of the UK’s major property listings services, founded in 2007. Their service includes domestic property listings for both rental and sales. UBDC has had a partnership with Zoopla since 2016. The Zoopla datasets contain information related to both rental and sale property listings in the UK from 2010 onwards. They cover various property characteristics including location, type, and size of property as well as other features along with the sale or rental price and the dates for which the listing was live. Open text fields may contain further unstructured information on property attributes and amenities

The method by which the research datasets are produced has changed over time so there are two series, both of which cover sales and rental listings:

• Generation 1: from the 1st of January 2010 to 31st December 2021
• Generation 2: from the 1st of October 2016 onwards

The fields available in each Generation are similar. Full details are provided in the tables below. The main differences between Generation 1 and Generation 2 are the inclusion in Generation 2 of geographic coordinates for listings (longitude, latitude) and the provision of additional information on changes in property features during the life of the listing. Additionally, it should be noted that both Generations were recompiled in January 2024. This resulted in ten additional variables in Generation 2. Please see Generation 2 entry for more information.

Generation 1 dataset: 
UBDC monitored the current listings on a daily basis. Each has a unique listing ID and property ID (except few cases where listings were retrieved with an invalid property ID – see available packages below). Listings may not appear for a few days but then reappear. When a listing had not been present for a property ID for three months, we queried the historic listings API to retrieve the details for that case and added it to the Generation 1 dataset. This is the version of the data made available to researchers. There is therefore a three-month lag built into this approach. The dataset contains a single row for each listing ID and covers a period from the 1st of January 2010 to the 31st of December 2021. Please note that data quality is significantly higher from 2012 onwards.

Access and restrictions:
UBDC's licence agreement with Zoopla limits access to UK-based academics conducting non-commercial, academic research. The datasets can only be used for research in the social sciences, including housing policy. In addition, there are some further exclusions on projects which can be undertaken with the data. The key exclusions are that the data shall not be used to develop new house price or rental indices as the basis for commercial products; property attribute models with a view to commercialisation; property valuation tools or other forms of property technology.

To use the data, researchers need to apply to UBDC setting out a summary of the work they plan to undertake so that the usage can be assessed against these criteria. Please apply to UBDC. If the intended use falls within the terms of the licence, researchers will be asked to sign an End User Licence agreement. Datasets will be shared with eligible applicants on receipt of completed license agreements.

More information:
Details of the data available via Zoopla’s Application Programming Interface (API) can be found at https://developers.zoopla.co.uk/docs/alto-apis-zoopla-apis