OnTheMarket has repeated its message that it is coming to the “crunch point” for agents evaluating their portal costs, and has made clear that Rightmove is in its sights.
It has done so after soliciting testimonials from agents advertising their properties on OTM who say they are receiving more leads from OTM than from Rightmove.
It has now released these testimonials.
Terry Holmes, director of Beresfords, a 17-branch sales and lettings agency in Essex, told OTM: “For the best part of a year, the gap between the number of overall leads supplied by Rightmove and OnTheMarket has been narrowing all the time with the OnTheMarket trajectory going upwards and Rightmove on the slide.
“In February, our lettings email leads from OnTheMarket eclipsed those from Rightmove. This is a very good performance and we can see the gap is closing between the two portals for sales leads too. We think the overall quality of OnTheMarket leads is very good.
“Beresfords is helping accelerate this realignment in the portals market by providing our new listings to OnTheMarket before they are released to other portals.
“Our clients benefit from the extra profile OnTheMarket accords these listings during this initial exclusive period and the staged introduction of their property to market.
“Active property-seekers are increasingly aware that OnTheMarket is the place where many new properties first come to market. And the resulting enquiries come to us via OnTheMarket rather than Rightmove.”
David Pickering, director at sales and lettings firm CCL Property in Moray, Scotland, said: “We have just signed a three-year contract with OnTheMarket and decided to remove our properties from Rightmove.
“We couldn’t justify an increase of 20% in our Rightmove fees and the quality and volume of leads we receive from OnTheMarket have given us confidence to make this decision.
“The number of leads from OnTheMarket has overtaken those supplied to us by Rightmove and its leads are of better quality than those supplied by Zoopla. Many have led to completed transactions.”
Chris Anderson, director at Anderson’s in Leicester, a one-office lettings firm, said: “From March 4 to March 10, we received 59% of our email leads from OnTheMarket, while 37% were from Rightmove and 4% from our own website.
“We place great value on the quality of our online property adverts and branding, but given that our investment with Rightmove is currently fivefold that of OnTheMarket it does raise questions for us about getting value from our property portals.”
“We’ll remain with OnTheMarket as long as it is generating good leads and the fee remains fair.”
Philip Norgan, sales and lettings manager at Martin Kemps in Buckinghamshire, said: “Lately the quantity of leads from OnTheMarket has been outstripping Rightmove across both sales and lettings.
“We have been with OnTheMarket since the beginning as silver members, and list with the other two major portals but OnTheMarket provides the best value for money by a country mile.
“We support the idea of an agent-backed portal 100%. We have been held to ransom for too long by Rightmove – I think that times are changing and more agents are beginning to think they don’t need it. I can see this becoming a trend and one that will continue.”
Mark Olsen of Purbeck Property, a sales and lettings firm in Wareham, said: “We found that for the last quarter of 2018, OnTheMarket supplied three times more sales leads than Rightmove. Lettings performance has also been very strong, with more leads coming from OnTheMarket than from Rightmove.
“We have recently signed a 12-month contract with OnTheMarket after its high performance.”
OTM boss Ian Springett said: “These statements of endorsement show that our strategy of building network effects is working: more agents displaying more properties attract more property-seekers, who generate more value to our agent shareholders and customers in the form of more leads.
“We have progressively ramped up our highly effective marketing campaign, which has included national TV, radio and posters, all strongly underpinned by heavyweight digital investment.
“In January we delivered seven times the number of leads to our estate agent customers compared with February last year, and we believe we are now coming to a crunch point for agents who are seriously considering their options around portal costs.
“Due to a muted housing market and the imminent up-front ban on lettings fees for tenants, there is significant pressure on agents to reduce their marketing spend or to allocate it in the most effective way.
“Rightmove’s latest full year results for 2018 showed another year in which Rightmove generated increases in revenue, profits and profit margin by hiking its Average Revenue per Advertiser by a further £83 to break through the £1,000 per month barrier for the first time.
“It also generated fewer leads for its property advertiser customers which means that for every £100 spent by Rightmove’s property advertiser customers, it generated an average of 17 leads. This is a reduction of 39% compared with 2015, when every £100 generated an average of 28 leads.
“OnTheMarket is a strategic cost reduction opportunity for thousands and thousands of agents. It also provides the potential for agents to invest in the business and share in its success as we broaden our agent investor base.
“Our listing fees are typically one quarter of Rightmove’s charges – it currently has a 75% profit margin – so there is scope to build a profitable business for shareholders while providing cost reductions for agents and a first-class search experience for property-hunters.
“Our progress to date and the encouraging support for an agent-backed portal give us confidence that we can continue to build on this early growth to develop a market-leading portal.”
How many Subscribers now Ian?
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To the “Thumbs Down” …….it’s a honest question.
Does honesty bother you?
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We have notice the same. On a monthly basis OTM leads are often more in numbers than RM. For the upper end of the market the leads are generally a better quality too.
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They’d be giving us alot more leads if they had got rid of rightmove. I wonder how many agents would have moved to them and tied to 5 years if they new what the plan really was.
Like brexit for estate agents.
OnTheShite
Rightmove will never go away until they give us a genuine plan to crossover 100%.
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You can make your own plan Bless You. Stop paying RM. Start paying OTM.
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That was the point of #onthemarket. To empower agents to leave rightmove with security of numbers.
What is wrong with this industry. Absolute joke. Countrywide and lsl about to go bust and still on rightmove who killed them.
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You make a valid point Bless You…IMHO Rightmove may be directly responsible for the acceleration of a large number of Agencies closures over the coming financial year, due to their excessive fees (albeit, this has been enabled by Agents, who continue to subscribe/agree to the ever increasing costs of RM membership)…
The cumulative effect of regaulatory changes (Tenant Fee Ban/increasing and onerous legislation, punitive tax changes and the general malaise in the property market [certainly in our areas of operation] brought about by economic and political uncertainty) will no doubt see Rightmove take a significant drop in membership levels over the finacial year 2019/2020…
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But no drop in revenue as the remainers pay more!
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Well…that’s up to each individual business-owner/BOD/MD to assess the merits of leaving or remaining.
I personally don’t (and won’t) concern myself with RM’s revenue, as I’m not a shareholder (albeit we were a stakeholder prior to handing in our notice) …I concern myself with my own business’s performance.
There will come a point where RM’s pricing becomes prohibitive Vs. tangible income generated directly linked to RM membership (we are a Lettings firm, so EA’s may take a different view based on leads generated for sales)…Particularly if the market continues to be subdued, the numbers simply may not ”add up” for many businesses, and the decision makes itself.
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Shareholders back their own failing project!
It has maxed out boys and girls and is becoming desperate with increasingly aggressive phone calls to non member agents.
Those who were going to join have joined.
Share price says it all really.
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I’ll quote you on this post.
Watch this space
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PIE is only one forum for the industry. There are many Facebook groups dedicated to our profession and they are full of owners saying they are using the free option but OTM are now trying to charge them and they are walking away.
No doubt the thumbs down brigade will be out in force on this but sadly boys and girls you can’t beat facts.
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There are many sides to every story. Brexit being the prime example of this whereby what one says isn’t always what one does. Rather than telling people what is going to happen or what they should do let them make up their own minds on what is best for their business. Over the next 12 months we will see what happens. Either OTM will continue to grow or will start to wither. Each agent will have their own view and their own evidence on which to form that view. From personal experience the OTM leads far outstrip the RM ones so I am willing to continue giving it a chance. Forums and facebook groups will not decide this battle.
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This is completely the case.
They took a great idea; a great amount of momentum and took a wrong turn here and there.
Utlimately cocking up their own project and the goodwill of their initial followers along the way.
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They need a change at the head, to get back on course.
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These agents are the ones paying Zooplankton £200 pcm…”we’re on all three websites madam..”
Unfortunately the onthemarket denial cannot last long – it is here to stay – get used to it.
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I get more from my own website. Need to give the marketing department a nudge, Ian. Stop mugging us off with “premium” products.
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Could you do some proper journalism and report on the other side of this story, EVERY agent I’ve spoken to about otm leads has said yes they’re increasing but the quality is absolutely dreadful (not really surprised as otm spend so much on advertising with pie)
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No company or individual can purchase editorial space in the news column of EYE and whilst OnTheMarket is a very highly valued (and our longest standing) advertising client they are nowhere near the top of the spending league. Our editorial stands entirely separate from advertising and is not influenced by it. We have lost a few clients along the way because they were miffed with our news coverage of their businesses. It’s a price we are always prepared to pay in order to maintain the integrity of our editorial.
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chatty.. PIE puts out the click bait…. we react … nothing changes. like i said as an industry we are an absolute joke.
While strippers get to join a trade union to protect them,,we get get fined £200k for even discussing a fair fee.
Bless PIE.
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How can that get a dislike!!!!!!!!!!!
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Catty Cathy innit?
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Not true. My leads are great.
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Pleased to report that we handed in our notice to Rightmove last week, across all branches…
One added benefit of this is that our teams will not be spending hours chasing ”phantom” applicants, who never pick up phones, never respond to voicemails, emails or call backs…suffice it to say, I’ve had my suspicions for sometime that there may be some amount of ‘invented’ applicant enquiries (oddly increasing in proportion of late)…
We’ve taken the trial with OTM since December ’18, and the leads appear to be of reasonable quality and quantity.
Cheerio Rightmove…it’s been, well…disappointing
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Left rightmove a year ago and will never go back, no need to advertise lettings on it as zoopla do a better job for half the price. A few leads from OTM but not enough to make me want to pay for it at the end of the freebie.
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I’ll never say ”never”’…however I would be more than happy to never again be ”soft-soaped” by another RM rep either in a face-to-face meeting or over the phone… (I could spend that time doing something much more enjoyable, like…clawing my own eyes out with a pair of scissors ;))
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Come June 1st Tenant Fees Ban, many agents will drop RM and have started going off now! this came up in a conversation with a RM rep when I asked the cost of having sales only, he said it would cost me more than having sales & Lettings, he told me they don’t want to lose any more stock and are aware that OTM provide more lettings enquiries and that was the main reason letting agents were leaving.
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Said it many times and I will say it again. It is a pipe dream for OTM. They shafted too many people in the past and it has left a bitter taste in some agents mouths.
OTM only have 6% of all the portal traffic so it is not like they are top of the league. They never will be. They will always be #3.
Also, it speaks volumes when 4 of the 6 founding members are back advertising with Zoopla…..
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The OTM RM debate is just like listening to the Brexit debate.
In or out, is Zoopla the backstop?
Will the angry group ever be happy?
Is Ian the Boris of portals?
and on and on……
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I have to say I have been really disappointed with OTM. I am an early supporter, so I didn’t get the 12 months free and, having just joined Zoopla to carry out a market comparison across the three I am now told by OTM that as an early subscriber they haven’t relaxed the rules we originally signed for, but all new subscribers can list where they like…..
How sad that I am penalised for supporting OTM from inception.
The way this has been handled has left me feeling this that this will be Rightmove 2 when they get their foot firmly on the ladder so we are all just going to be on carousel of three portals rather than two over the years.
Nice to see morals have been sold out for ££££s again!
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Is OTM still the agents mutual thing where only high street agents could join?
I see comments about generating leads. Why can’t buyers and sellers just interact with your own agency direct without this middle man?
#ConTheMarket more like
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