OnTheMarket plc has launched its new Lettings Automated Valuation Model (AVM) tool to provide consumers with an instant estimate of their home’s rental value.

The Lettings AVM is the latest in a line of new functionality developed by OnTheMarket over the past year to generate leads and promote consumer engagement with agents.

The tool was developed as a direct outcome of agent feedback during the ongoing ‘Town Hall’ sessions which have been running since April 2021, hosted by Jason Tebb, Chief Executive Officer of the portal.

The OnTheMarket Lettings AVM has been developed with Property Price Advice, who also provide the portal with its residential sales AVM.

OnTheMarket says that member agents have repeatedly called for a lettings version of the AVM tool to assist in generating landlord enquiries, particularly given the chronic shortage of PRS stock in many areas of the UK.

After nearly six months in development and testing, the Beta version of the lettings AVM has now been released live for consumer use.

Jason Tebb said: “During my recent Town Halls many of our agents expressed a need for more support on the lettings side of their businesses. We’ve listened and, working closely with our commercial partners Property Price Advice, we’ve developed this latest addition to our suite of online valuation tools that will generate a new type of lead for our agents.”

Peter Sherrard, Managing Director of Property Price Advice says: “We’ve been delighted to work with Jason and his team to build this. The algorithm powering the OnTheMarket lettings AVM has been developed exclusively for OnTheMarket and is re-calculated and updated monthly by our econometrics team to reflect market dynamics, as well as using live data to deliver optimum results.”

“Being able to provide both an instant indication of achievable monthly and weekly rent, together with an instant estimate of annual yield will, we believe, prove as popular with consumers as the residential sales AVM which has consistently performed exceptionally well for OnTheMarket and has generated hundreds of thousands of leads for their agents since its launch.”

OnTheMarket says that all consumer data collected from the AgentVal tool is provided to the agent and not used by OnTheMarket or Property Price Advice, so agents maintain absolute control over their own data and drive more value and leads from their website traffic, rather than having to share valuable data with a third-party lead generation tool provider.