OnTheMarket.com has launched a channel on its website for commercial property which the portal says will not feature advertising or additional information other than the listing.

The channel is an attempt by OnTheMarket to match the services of rivals Rightmove and Zoopla, which also have commercial property channels.

OnTheMarket.com is offering its new service to residential agents who already have commercial properties within their feeds and will be free until the end of next year to any agency listing with it.

The portal is also dropping its ‘one other portal’ rule for its commercial listings but is to ban online-only agents from the new channel, as it does within its residential listings.

“It is exciting to launch our new commercial property channel to complement our existing residential UK and overseas searches,” says Ian Springett, Chief Executive of OnTheMarket.com.

“It is a service which many of our member firms have actively encouraged us to develop and it represents yet another sign of growth and strategic intent for OnTheMarket.com.

“We are looking forward to working with agents to build a high-quality search experience for commercial property-seekers.”

The new channel will also be open to agents who don’t list residential properties with OnTheMarket.com.

But OnTheMarket has its work cut out if it wants to match largest rival Rightmove.com which this year has been heavily promoting its commercial channel. It attracts over six million searches every month, it is claimed, and grew its the number of enquiries it generates by 30% during 2015.

Zoopla also has a commercial property and within its recently-released Full Year results revealed it has 415 commercial agents signed up.

For more information about the OnTheMarket commercial channel email [email protected].