OnTheMarket now has listing agreements with over 8,000 agent branches.
Hitting the number means that it has now recruited 2,500 more offices since it floated on the stock market on February 9.
The recruitment rate, at over 800 per month, compares with the 100-plus returnees to Zoopla per month, which ZPG announced last week.
The increase in OTM agents represents growth of more than 45% in just over three months.
The first 1,000 new branches were announced on March 14, with the 7,500 mark revealed on May 2.
CEO Ian Springett said: “We are extremely pleased to be continuing to exceed our own expectations and to have reached this latest milestone of 8,000 offices so soon after announcing 7,500 offices.
“In sustaining this pace of expansion, we are very strongly encouraged by the growing agent support and feedback to our proposition.
“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.”
Springett has stressed the importance of building scale in a recent interview with Directors Talk, when he set out his stall to new investors.
In it, he said: “We will be giving updates to the market from time to time about our progress in building the number of agent offices we’re listing, and that’s a pretty key indicator of our progress in building the network to full scale.
“The faster that we can reach that scale, and the same scale as our competitors, the sooner we can begin investing more in marketing to help deliver more enquiries to them, and of course, the sooner consumers will find a comprehensive stock of property with onthemarket.com.
“We’ll also update on our visit traffic. Investors should look for steady growth over the coming months ahead of our fuller marketing push later in the year, once the agent network has been built up.
“They’ll certainly see some brand building activity from us soon and they can also look for our logo in increasing numbers of estate agent windows.
“That is one of the obligations that agents take on when they join us and that is to promote us through their own means, in their office windows, on their websites, on their property particulars and other advertising.
“Of course, investors can just come to the portal, try the portal out, see how it compares with the others and obviously, if they are searching in their local area, they should see more and more agents listing with us over the coming months.”
In the same interview, Springett said that the field sales force has already doubled to 32, and will double again by summer, with more numbers added as the year goes on.
I wonder how many of these companies/branches will stay on once they are actually having to pay for the service?
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Possibly one of the same questions that Alex Chesterman asked himself last week when he was deciding wether to accept the offer from silver lake and cash in.
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You are most likely right. Rightmove has grown to such a size and has such a huge percentage of the market that the only people likely to see a decent return from Z/OTM is those selling their shares. This fantasy of agents walking away from R is just never likely to happen
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We have dropped rightmove and Intend to stay with OTM and drop Z if need be.
4 other agents have also come away from Rightmove in the last 6 months.
Under current market conditions you have to pick up that phone and work the clients.
All you ever need are a few good motivated buyers and sellers at any given time to give a great service and make a decent living.
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I intend to stay, and will drop RM over the coming months 🙂
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Course you do! – I bet all 3,000 of the new offices will do the same.
Deluded.
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Smile….you just can’t help yourself can you?
Is there any chance, whatsoever, of a serious debate with you without you throwing your toys out of the pram like a spoilt child?
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Every chance but it’s tosh that an agent has signed up to OTM and looking at dropping RM.
If you owned an estate agency you would know that.
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Just one question comes to mind…..why didn’t OTM do what they are doing now, from the very start, when they first launched?
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Took the words out of my mouth.
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I agree with you smile please….YOU ARE RIGHT, clearly no one pulled the wool over your eyes, neither then or now.
Either way agents now have an opportunity to recoup any money thats been extorted from by them by RM (£350 pm is roughly what we should be paying) by being able to fix fees for 5 years as well as take advantage of the share option.
RM is still currently valued at roughly 45x OTM.
Wasn’t this whole thing about managing portal costs.
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Because they had the wrong man at the helm.
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Had? Did management change?
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Why do agents keep:
falling for a business that had an IPO agenda whilst recruiting members to join a mutual; broke all their original promises regarding the mutual; failed to meet their target of overtaking ZPG; spent £m’s litigating against its own members…
working with the same people who launched a “mutual” only for the Board to recommend de-mutualising after less than two years…
providing funds for a business which floated for a fraction of its promised value and which, it is likely, can only increase market capitalisation and produce dividends for external shareholders by steadily increasing Average Revenue Per Advertiser, just like RM and ZPG did…
believing that the same people behind Agents’ Mutual, who are now running a publicly listed company, will keep the business under the control of agents if another Silver Lake comes knocking on the door…
accepting share options from a publicly listed business which relies for growth on the conflicted madness of members feeding the monster which is feeding off them…
signing five year contracts…
joining on, so called, “free” limited time offers which will be full price in no time, and which undercut the original members who were sold a mutual…
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Could not have put it better myself.
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A lot of nay sayers commenting on here! I’m glad they don’t work for me! I d kick them out in a second. It amazes me that people with such ingrained negativity exist in any type of selling function.
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