Zoopla has increased its customer base during Covid by 2% in marked contrast to Rightmove, which recently revealed it had lost hundreds of branches during the pandemic following its fees policy U-turn debacle.

But agents hoping that Zoopla’s latest figures are proof that Rightmove’s dominance of the portal market is finally weakening should be careful – all the portals are wary not to compete directly on like-for-like metrics.

For example, Zoopla only publishes its total agent and new home sites combined, which has risen to 16,545, while Rightmove breaks its totals down to agents (15,767) and new homes sites (3,391) or a total of 19,158.

The Negotiator has asked Zoopla for a breakdown of its figures but the portal declined to do so.

Free usage

Nevertheless, Zoopla claims that its free portal usage offers launched during Covid, which were available on condition agents promise to use it as their primary portal, have been instrumental in growing its customer numbers, even though it cost the portal £30 million. It has also a huge number to convert to longer-term deals; 84% of agents now in long term contracts compared to 23% at the start of the year.

The deals offer free usage of the portal for between five and nine months, depending on the agreement entered into, if agents commit to a 12-month contract, with a cut off of January next year.

“Our growth in customer numbers is outperforming the broader market considerably, despite the 50 day market closure, and we hope this is testament to us doing the right thing by our customers,” says Andy Marshall, Chief Commercial Officer at Zoopla (left).

“Now that the market is rebounding with a genuine underlying strength, free portal usage has helped agents to rebuild their business pipelines, without any costs payable to us.

“We are still welcoming new customers on board and are able to extend free use of Zoopla until January to existing customers.”