City analyst Jefferies has changed its mind about the UK housing market, upgrading stock which it downgraded in January.
It has improved its ratings on Zoopla (from hold to buy) and Countrywide (also from hold to buy) and on a string of house builders.
While it has left LSL’s existing buy rating alone, it has set its share price target higher.
It has left Rightmove with an underperform rating, but raised its share target. An underperform rating means that Jefferies expects price appreciation of shares plus yield to be minus 20% within a 12-month period.
It has also raised the share price targets of Zoopla and Countrywide.
Jefferies says it has been “surprised by the strength of the spring selling season” reported by house builders, and says of the property portals market that “in our mind, the threat of Agents’ Mutual’s challenger portal, OnTheMarket, is diminishing”.
It goes on: “The latest traffic data suggests that OTM is not gaining traction with home buyers and we do not believe that it currently has sufficient stock to drive traffic in the future.”
Jefferies admits that it got some things wrong in January. It believed that “negative newsflow” on mortgage approvals, housing transactions and house prices would lead to share price weakness in the first quarter of this year.
However, despite housing transactions in January actually being worse than forecast, in February the fall was 8% rather than the 20% Jefferies had feared.
Of the portals market, Jefferies says that after OTM launched in late January, as the dust settled it became clear that Zoopla had been the main casualty of the “one other portal” ruling.
Jefferies says: “In our view, this was not a reflection of the different offerings from Rightmove and Zoopla, but rather due to a targeted campaign from OTM encouraging members to drop Zoopla over Rightmove.
“The aim of this strategy was to increase OTM’s chances of becoming the number 2 portal, at which point it would turn its attentions to taking out Rightmove.
“Since the launch, there has been much debate across the trade press about the relative strengths of the UK portals and we have been surprised by the strength of the war of words from the OTM camp.
“However, as equity analysts we have a preference for numbers over words and facts over opinions, both of which paint a pretty clear picture.”
Jefferies says that, according to Hitwise, traffic has so far peaked at OTM in week seven at 630,206 visits and declined each week since. In week ten, OTM had 349,613 hits.
“This data suggests to us that the new portal is far failing to gain any traction with consumers, despite the scale of its launch marketing campaign.
“The fall in traffic also suggests to us that home buyers are visiting the site but, due to a lack of listings or a limited number of search features and research tools, are not returning.”
On March 30, Jefferies measured listings of two or more bedroom properties for sale and rent across London.
It found Rightmove had 72,572, Zoopla 70,149 and OTM 19,080.
Jefferies said that since January 26, Zoopla listings had declined by 3,840, or 5.2%.
Jefferies advised Zoopla on its successful stock market flotation last summer.
Comments (45)
Okay lets get this straight OTM was set up by a group of agents, who are greedy and always had the highest rents and property evaluations on the market. They are the companies that help to drive property prices way above their REAL worth. Along came Rightmove and then Zoopla who wanted a piece of the action and brought with it a good service and yet kept a healthy competitive market. This was not good enough for these property agents and they wanted to keep all of it for themselves and set up OTM. What I do not understand is why other agents would want to give more power to these handful of companies that given the chance would quite happily swallow your agency up and dominate all of the market. It is like funeral directors getting together and deciding to build their own hearses, because they think they are getting expensive, copying one and then wondering why their customers are not impressed. My point being what do a bunch of estate agents know about building and running a national website.
The reason Rightmove and Zoopla got into this mess, was the fact they misunderstood the market away from London and did not adjust their pricing plans for different areas. I now live in Kent and was amazed my landlady bought a house the day it came on the market, had it rented two weeks later and made £20,000 pounds on it in a year. In County Durham, houses are on the market, no pun intended, for over two years with little or no viewings. In that time your lucky if your house is rising at the rate of inflation, even if that is 0.5%. In London you can buy to let and still sell your house and get the asking price. In Sunderland you would have to keep the house empty and then have it on the market for a minimum of six months hoping to sell it. This is what Zoopla and Rightmove did not care about and caused this fiasco in the first place. Lets just hope this gets sorted, agents and Zoopla and the rest can sort this out and we can get the building industry back on its feet and get past all these issues to drive the economy forward again.
Jeffries used to be undecided,now they are not so sure
I was told today how many agents have gone back to Z so far from an eager Z rep who seems to think the numbers were strong but it felt more like they’ve given up on the idea that they’ll ever get back to the numbers they had 12 months ago so whilst AM has had an impact, is it really what we wanted……
I would suggest no.
As many now would say ‘the aim was to bring Zoopla down…’ a year ago it was Rightmove. We all know it – and it has improved RM’s position. So has it had the desired impact against the market leader? A resounding no I’m afraid.
Had the tubthumping agents left Rightmove en-masse when they had the chance then the market would have been split right open……but they didn’t. And come rate- renewal time they’ll literally be paying for it. And I’d imagine another wave of investment from OTM.
You seem to be missing the position. Just about everyone knows that those that left Z didn’t switch over to RM but went to OTM so RM did not gain and your argument is wrong on that fact alone.
As for RM many agents left them for Z, I seem recall the Welsh agents confirmed this months ago. It was also confirmed by those that stayed with RM would consider dropping RM once things happened. 1) The public became aware of OTM as a contender (it is, regardless of have small it may be in comparison AT THIS TIME). 2) Agents wanted to see OTM work (confidence requirement) and it does work. 3) Tied in contracts come to an end with RM (fast approaching for some) which would allow them to make the jump if they so wish … we will have to wait and see.
No-one is expecting all agents to drop RM but other than those shareholder corporate and web only anti-agents sites, most will is the prediction and sound business sense, leaving those left behind with one very big headache as they may very well will be in the minority. As for the public they don’t care which web site, as long as they can find property.
RM strength is only in numbers of agents promoting them, not the public. If that stops, the writing is on the wall and the independent stock market have consistently reported on this. Analysts with a vested interest in promoting a ship that may capsize is more to do with the article produced by EYE.
Why would those that left Z switch to RM? They were already on RM and just joined OTM. RM gained because their main competition (only competition) was weakened, by those that supposedly want to weaken RM. It’s pretty easy to see that.
Digital Expert…. I thought I smelt you entering the room?
Rock & Roll Rightmove and jack up your Annual Members Rates… you’ve got the hammer and the nails!… so keep banging away… just don’t forget that it is your coffin that you are building… unless the majority of UK Estate Agents are really going to sit there year after year and get r*dgered by Rightmove.
Time will tell if UK Estate Agency seized the opportunity to move the Portal Marketing of our Industry to OnTheMarket or simply chose to enjoy fuelling the Rightmove Share Price… for a company that provides Online Property Advertising…. that’s all… the traffic/hits/leads Hikemove Hype is just that Hype!
I can confirm one local fact in my area… The Duopoly supporting Corporate Estate Agents are on their hands & knees, woeful offices, woeful stock, tacky gimmicks to try and attract business, demoralised staff with regular churn of unhappy staff!…. I’ll take Traditional Estate Agents and Traditional Service all day long….love it!…. and my clients love it!
…and your comment re “improved Rightmove’s position”…. nope?…. once again completely missed the point… “improved Rightmove’s share price” is the accurate comment.. and their increasing share price bears no relation to the service they provide me or the perceived value/success of their service!
Another mature, hilarious post full of repartee.
Facts are: more agents are relying on RM to deliver all their leads because it is now the only real lead source for them.
Again, just because you want something to be true, it doesn’t make it so, Captain Luc Picard. Sorry, I mean GPL.
And again, it’s not about whether estate agency wants something (I’m sure Estate Agency wants 5% rates) it’s all about what the consumers want. And it isn’t OTM.
Uncomfortable truths, GPL, but truths nonetheless.
Did I read ‘Picard’??
Is this someone else wanting to trade blows with me on the subject of Star Trek?
YEE-HAH! Bring it on, Digital Expert! ;o)
Auto Spell Nonsense!!!!!!!
Rightmove creating the perception amongst estate agents that we can’t breathe without them?!
Steaming Manure!
Its not the Auto Spell GPL 😉
EHenderson? ressoT
Waffleferies?… Jefferies!?!… sorry, facts paint a picture… hang on?… January Jefferies painting a different picture?…. April they paint another picture?…. so much picture painting they must be P*ss Artists!
I’m in with OTM for 5 Years…. there’s a fact that you don’t need to paint.
What the whole OTM launch has confirmed is that the Zoopla & Rightmove show are not required for our industry, every single UK Estate Agent should simply select 1 or other. The only reason I have invested in OTM is ultimately to dump RM…. having already dumped Zoopla with Zero impact to my business.
Zoopla never kept RM honest in fees and RM are doing a Hatton Gardens on Estate Agents with No Balaclavas!
Fact is RM will never change so unless the fencesitters and co invest in their industry via OTM they will be dancing to the RM Tune until they retire.
Truly our clients don’t give a toss about which portal so there is NO reason that if our industry supports OTM we cannot Dump the Duopoly for good!
Jefferies & The Duopoly are working the Stock Market, they certainly have no interest in the estate agency industry…. if it was creme eggs we were selling they would be looking to suck the filling regardless.
My business continues to list exclusively with OnTheMarket for the first 48 Hours and every single NEW Instruction picks up enquiries and quality viewings via OTM during that period…. full stop! I remain unimpressed with the quality from Rightmove…. by & large a giant browsing portal which lacks quality/active buyers! RM generates numbers….. like a giant Enigma Machine!! When you strip the numbers to the facts…. sorry, this is a company built on creating the perceptiob amongst estate agents that we can breathe without them. Nonsense!
They one thing they are outstanding at is milking their share price!…. Hats Off to Farmer Rightmove…. cleverly herding all those estate agents…. milking away…. tickling your financial udders!
OnTheMarket?
Time will tell.
I couldn’t have written it better, well done GPL and exactly the same reaction in our business and in many others I speak to around the country.
I keep hearing OTM has made RM stronger! Rubbish, the one portal rule didn’t increase agents going onto RM or Z. They left either of them making them weaker.
If OTM is such a failure, why do you go on so much about a non-entity, what are you afraid of? If your out, that’s your choice, others have made theirs which is of no concern of yours.
Paul H, keep sticking your head in the sand by ignoring independent industry accepted traffic figures. The only people in the bunkers are AM and those agents who are blind to the reality.
“The only people in the bunkers are AM and those agents who are blind to the reality”
So you think that all AM members should give up, take the small financial loss and re join Zoopla then?
My two pennies – advertising on digital sphere’s is really easy in the modern world.
Dump the ones that don’t offer value, and here that means eyeballs, leads and reasons for Vendors to choose you.
It’s there in black and white. Principles don’t sell houses. Visibility and people do.
“Principles don’t sell houses”……..Sorry, but who told you, or suggested they ever did???
OTM was created from a principle, rather than a business decision, no?
If it was a business decision, you’d look at where value is, where your customers are looking and invest there. OTM isn’t either of those things.
I would never say that, but I would say ‘don’t sign a 5 year contract which limits your ability to market your clients’ properties’.
Most rational (not emotional) observers would see this as sound advice…
You can picture now Alex Chesterman and Laurence Hall sitting in there bunker last week with Jefferies…..”Can you please do one of your totally unbiased reports again, we really must try and get some of these 5000 agents back as the letter that we wrote to all their clients slagging them off just hasn’t worked?”.
Sigh.
Do you really think Zoopla are Jefferies biggest and most important customer?
This is big business and fact rules supreme.
If you had been following this issue from around this time last year then you would appreciate that Jefferies have far more to lose out of this then many think.
Woodentop, its not that I am not a lover of the concept of OTM but not a lover of the fatally flawed one portal rule. I said before OTM launched that after the euphoria of launch AM agents would increasingly focus on delivery and performance and the current traffic drop off is factual and damning. 5000 agents signed up is irrelevant in the context of success, the relevant figure is lead delivery and ultimately AM will stand or fall on that alone. Saying OTM is only 3 months old will only wash with agents for so long, and some will wait less long than others.
“but not a lover of the fatally flawed one portal rule”……..Haree, you have said publicly that you now have no intention of ever joining OTM……..What is your continued motivation behind your constant knocking of it? If you actively want it to fail, and that is your present motivation, then why not say just that?
Harree we all know you are not a lover of OTM but are you not just manipulating stats to your biased view? The visits/hits are a reflection of the public attendance which will rise and fall throughout the year. What us agents do know is that the quality is the important thing not the volume. Most of RM visits are not the public but agents/surveyors using it on a n everyday basis for comparables etc. You fail to mention the visits to RM and Z, how much they actually convert into sales. A tech nerd told me years ago that a web site can easily set-up a ghost account to enter every second of the day to manipulate hits and has been a suspicion by some for a long time. The level of hits to actual conversion on RM for example, is pretty damning.
For over 5000 agents to now be signed up to OTM cannot be ignored and certainly not a failure, just wait see what happens when the RM locked in contracts end.
I can tell you what will happen when the RM locked in contracts end Woodentop…
They will offer those coming to the end of their contract the choice of signing new long term contracts with a large increase, or not signing a long term contract at a larger increase.
And those agents (well, over 95% of them), will sign them or pay the higher rate. A new website with a few thousand visits per day will not stop that happening.
“They will offer those coming to the end of their contract the choice of signing new long term contracts with a large increase, or not signing a long term contract at a larger increase”.
You have just answered why OTM came about. Thank you.
“traffic has so far peaked at OTM in week seven at 630,206 visits and declined each week since. In week ten, OTM had 349,613 hits.” Traffic 45% down and falling weekly – these figures are also backed up by Googles’s keyword traffic tool. OTM is like a new pub, loads of people visit in the first few weeks to try it out but the acid test is how many return. Joe Public – the few that have heard of and tried OTM – don’t like it and are not returning. Like it or not, that is the fact.
Perhaps the would like it more if more agents joined and put their stock on?
Perhaps the public would like it more if more agents joined and put their stock on?
Correct, but why would they leave two products that the public already love and are providing more proven value for agent, seller & buyer for one that is very expensive, and isn’t.
This is business, not a charity for good causes – fair to say?
“but why would they leave two products that the public already love” ……..Because those same companies are selling data created by those agents to 3rd parties who will then try and sell alternative properties/services to the detriment of the agents’ business – you’re right it isn’t about charity or good causes, it’s about business – fair to say?
Jeffries measured hits and two or more bed properties. Bit random. Hits as a measurement is like pricing in shillings and how is excluding one bed properties useful. Bit bizarre. As is blaming negative news flow for bad judgement but then claiming you value numbers not words.
Sounds like the inevitable to me, but boring that the coverage is so blatantly biased on the subject.
I guess not massively surprising given the sponsorship of this portal by Agents Mutual.
I wonder if, when this thing (Agents Mutual) falls on its face, whether PIE will apologise to its readers for leading them down ‘the garden path’?
You are getting boring. I’ve watched your posts over the last week and I think I am correct in saying you haven’t a clue what OTM is and how it came about and if you are an estate agent which I doubt very much, you would know. Your comments are just silly.
Woodentop at least offer some kind of debate / reason why you believe EHendersons comments to be silly, instead all you do is call him names, very childish.
Consumers will decide if OTM works or not – it looks from these figures they are failing – fast.
A stronger Rightmove is all OTM has created – look at the reports, top job guys.
David, I like many others have debated OTM for over 12 months and it is like hearing a stuck record by those that forget what has been said before and continue to peddle silly comments, often in contradiction to what they have said before. OTM is here to stay, the constant anti brigade is repetitive and often based on inaccuracy’s or manipulated or a misunderstanding. I have lost patience with those that seem to have nothing better to do than go on and on without actually coming up with anything useful. As for calling names, err where? I said THE comment was silly, not called him (or her) names.
Personally I have no doubt that OTM is here to stay; as a poor third placed competitor to the established portals. There are plenty of agents who I speak to at events and gatherings that simply don’t understand their customers and the internet and are stuck in the past – they will continue to support this thing, forever.
Over time, agents and stock will gravitate to where the eyeballs are. Woodentop, I think you need to accept that there is a majority out there who – although no one can deny the principle of an agent owned portal – think that the current model, team, marketing and contracts are average and the plan mediocre. The numbers – not the nasty comments from people like you – are proving this to be the case and I expect people who have set their stall out to support this thing to become more and more emotional and feverish even as the bad news flows.
Of course its early days and I accept that the website is pretty good, but it isn’t amazing, which it needs to be. They also did well to sign up so many agents, but my experience of this was a slightly menacing/arrogant approach which put me off from the start.
You write like a stroppy child. You haven’t debated OTM for 12 months, you’ve spent 12 months telling everyone it is the answer, and it isn’t. Just because people are sticking to their guns, you don’t like it.
If you are an OTM sales rep, I would suggest that your efforts are backfiring, as any rational agent reading these posts will likely be put off by your fundamentalist attitude and brickbats.
No who is calling names? many who have been using these forums for some years will have known that I have provided constructive advice to agents long before OTM was even considered. I am not an OTM rep but I understand that 5000 others agree with me while it seems about 6 or so anti-OTM only ever appear on here. You are correct it is where the eyeballs are and how did they get to where they are today …….. from the agents lead …. not from a portal. Your other comments are ridiculous and incorrect …. actually very silly.