OnTheMarket continue to dismiss claims that just 18% of its estate agency customers have seen an increase in leads since OnTheMarket were taken over by CoStar in December last year.
Graham Lock, chief executive of The Federation of Independent Agents (FIA), earlier this month revealed the results of a recent LinkedIn poll asking if estate agents had noticed a rise in in leads since the OTM acquisition by CoStar, with 82% of respondents saying they had little to no change, despite a multi-million pound marketing media campaign to boost consumer awareness.
OTM says the poll as not being reflective of what is actually happening in terms of portal success.
The property portal claims that over the last 10 months, OTM has achieved a 212% increase in traffic and a 348% growth in unique visitors, and its internal verified data shows a 76% growth in sales leads. Additionally, total stock on site has increased by 45% while the number of listing estate agents has grown by 27%.
OTM further claims that it is now the fastest-growing in the UK with a 90% increase in total visits (based on data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb (This is compared to Zoopla and Rightmove which OTM says experienced a 9% and 1% decline respectively).
OTM informed EYE that a surge in estate agency and developer listings has helped the platform surpass 16,500 advertisers, exceeding the 15,000 listings reported in May of this year, and its previous high of 13,867 recorded back in June 2020.
However, it is important to note that this surge has been helped by a free listings offer as some agents sign up to a trial period on the portal.
Andy Florance, founder and CEO of CoStar Group, commented: “It is hard to believe that CoStar Group acquired OnTheMarket only 10 months ago. The team has accomplished what seems like 10 years of work in this time. Our year-over-year growth speaks volumes about our commitment to delivering exceptional value to both property seekers and agents and we look forward to building on these successes and delivering superior ROI to clients.”
Jason Tebb, president of OnTheMarket, added: “Since the acquisition we’ve been very clear about our goal to become the market leading portal in the UK. This rapid rate of growth, in less than a year, is a statement of intent and shows that we are delivering on CoStar’s long-standing strategy of investing and partnering with agents in the industry to generate high-intent leads at a fraction of the cost of our rivals.
“We have utilised the investment and expertise of CoStar with immediate effect, assembling the components of a best in class, user-focused platform, increasing traffic and advertisers far more quickly than initially expected. But this is only the beginning. Our focus remains on becoming the number one property search site in the UK.”
Will be interesting to see when their charges to Agents start to increase as CoStar shareholders will want to see an actual return on their investment sooner rather than later I suggest. By the way of explanation Black Rock who hold just over 31million shares in CoStar are not known for their patience.
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