Zoopla says more agents will return to it from OnTheMarket.

Last night, OnThe Market declined to comment on the claims.

Zoopla said traffic to OTM has been averaging about 10% of Zoopla levels over the past few months. Zoopla quoted Hitwise, although OTM has preferred to quote Google analytics.

The latest war of words follows Zoopla’s results announced yesterday.

Last night, Zoopla claimed OTM is struggling following a plunge in traffic.

Zoopla said OTM is also struggling to find “a loyal audience”.

Zoopla said yesterday: “The recent plunge in OTM’s traffic shows that it had just 6% of ZPG’s visits in November according to Hitwise and the drop is in stark contrast to both ZPG’s and Rightmove’s seasonal fall in traffic of 10% in November.”

ZPG also announced as part of its results that leads per member remained strong at an average of around 125 per month and that appraisal leads increased by 65% year-on-year to an impressive figure of over 300,000 suggesting that those agents who are not on the ZPG platform are clearly missing out on one of the biggest sources of instructions in the market.

OTM visits for last 3 months (Source: Hitwise)

Month OTM Visits
September 3,633,915
October 3,759,022
November 2,139,301

Lawrence Hall of ZPG said: “Our results highlight that building a loyal audience of engaged users is about far more than just marketing spend. In a competitive market the quality of the product is what ultimately wins the day with both users and advertisers and that is what we are focused on.

“Having delivered over 25m leads to our members last year, including over 300,000 appraisal leads (up 65%), we remain by far one of the most effective marketing channels for property professionals in the UK and unsurprisingly we continue to see a solid flow of agents returning to us from OTM.”

Separately, in a piece for the Financial Times, writer Jonathan Guthrie concluded that both OTM and Zoopla need to do more against the juggernaut that is Rightmove.

His article says: “You might almost imagine Zoopla does not like OntheMarket.com, a rival property website operator.

“Alex Chesterman, chief executive of Zoopla, describes OTM as ‘a leaky bucket’ from which advertisers are dribbling away.

“Stephen Morana, finance director, says estate agents who list properties on OTM “are there for emotional rather than rational reasons”.

“He is wrong. It was logical for estate agents to band together to create a third force in property search. Zoopla makes a huge 50 per cent profit margin on its adverts. Rightmove, the market leader, does even better at 74 per cent. No matter how fancy the websites, they look like rent seekers to some agents, whom homebuyers accuse of the same vice.

“By setting up mutually owned OTM agents hope to claw back profits for themselves.

“If Mr Chesterman sounds like he never got the memo commanding bosses to welcome competition, it might be because OTM’s own stance is confrontational: it asks advertising members to use only one other property website. Most would pick Rightmove over Zoopla.

“OTM is the main reason Zoopla’s shares have lagged the FTSE All-Share index by some 25 per cent since its 2014 float.

“Zoopla lost 3,670 agent branches in the year to September, though the initial damage done by the launch of OTM in January was far greater. Revenues from agents fell 7 per cent to £58.3m.

“However, OTM has what is known as a “collective action problem”. Its success depends on many agents individually deciding to join. It has recruited only 5,000 agent branches so far. Its site therefore lacks stock, a turn-off for homebuyers.

“To a lesser extent Zoopla has the same collective action problem. It is number two in a market where competition must eventually drive down margins. Group profits before tax rose 17 per cent to £33.6m largely because it acquired comparison website uSwitch for £160m. Takeovers are a classic wheeze of bosses when growth in core activities pauses or halts.”

OTM yesterday declined  to comment to EYE