OnTheMarket has announced that it is now listing some 550,000 sales and rental properties – over half the total number available.
It says it has two-thirds the number that Zoopla has and over half those carried by Rightmove.
As at July 3, Zoopla had 580,860 UK residential sales properties and 241,390 UK residential lettings properties, totalling 822,250 properties.
Rightmove is assumed to have about 1m properties – the number it gave in both its 2016 and 2017 annual reports.
The figures for both Zoopla and Rightmove include direct listings from new home developers, a market segment which OTM is yet to focus on.
The increase in listings at OTM reflects the rapid growth in contracted agents with agreements to list their properties on the portal.
As at July 3, the number of contracted agent offices has grown, since the admission to AIM on February 9, from 5,500 to more than 9,500, which represents an increase of more than 72%. The company said it believes that it has listing agreements with approximately 51% of UK residential estate and lettings agency branches.
CEO Ian Springett said: “We are extremely pleased that, as a result of our reported growth in contracted agents, OTM is now displaying well over half of the market in terms of UK residential properties.
“The very strong and growing agent support for our proposition has enabled us to rapidly gain ground on the market share of property listings of our long-established key competitors.
“We remain committed to creating an agent-backed, full-scale challenger portal that injects some much-needed competition into the property portals landscape by disrupting what has for too long been effectively a cosy duopoly.”
Yesterday, shares in OTM closed at 162.5p, up 2.85% on the day but below the 165p they were offered to the market at launch on AIM.
Now this is the way to go. They’re getting more agents on board by allowing to subscribe for free till early next year and rapidly expanding. We recently signed up and have seen that the inquiries are equal/more than Zoopla. They have a multi million pound marketing campaign too. If they manage to get most agents on board by April then it would enter a very interesting phase. Imagine having almost 90% of UK listings. More clients would start searching OTM and RM and Z would suffer. The old boys would have to either reduce their prices or come up with something extraordinary. In the meanwhile if OTM doesn’t get too greedy and start charging extortionate amounts after the free subscription, then I believe they have done their job. I personally think that they should give another year for free subscription. When almost all Agents are on board then the fun will start. Keep it at minimum subscription and they will grow or else Zoopla would offer a very competitive price and most would just unsubscribe from OTM. The reason OTM has all these agents on board is because they are free till April 2019. In tough times ahead which the fee ban around the corner, we will have to cut all extra expenses including which portals to keep/unsubscribe.OTM If you’re listening …. give free for another year and try to rope in all the Agents. Invest a couple of million on us Agents and once you have almost all of UK’s listings …who would pay £1200 to RM every month and similarly clients would also first go on OTM to find a property. JOB DONE! Should’ve done this when you were launched. RM and Z are nothing without us Agents . Yet it’s the Agents that have to bear extreme high monthly costs.
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I think competition is healthy and it’s great that OTM are getting somewhere, this is all providing that when the free period ends we don’t all get shafted with yet another ridiculous portal fee per month. Hopefully when it takes more traction, Z & RM will have to wake up and stop fleecing the hand that feeds them!
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GREAT news to note that OTM is gradually gathering momentum. Those of us small independents who believed in the principle at first shot weren’t bad business minds after all.
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Rightmove trying to set up a meeting to let me know how much it’s gone up again, in spite of the market conditions. Never any dinner first, not even a little lubricant. It’s a perfectly good portal, but there’s a limit.
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In sales days of old any client parting with upward of £1k a month would be guaranteed a £30 meal at least once a year 🙂
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I believe there were crispy bacon butties (and I mean the BUN) at the RM GDPR Roadshow… does that count?
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