OnTheMarket
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Latest property news
Huge difference in traffic to three main property portals revealed by latest ZPG results
ZPG has revealed how much traffic it drives to its various property portals and, the latest figures show, they were visited 68 million times during January, trailing Rightmove by 52 million visits on average but well ahead of OnTheMarket’s 14 million. ZPG’s figures includes 58 million visits to its three property portals; Zoopla, PrimeLocation and SmartNewHomes, while the remaining ten million visits were to its other websites such as uSwitch and the recently-acquired Money. ZPG also says its property websites enjoyed a 10% year-on-year uplift in traffic and, as evidenced by the sea of faces staring at smartphones in Britain’s streets and train carriages, that 60% of its portal traffic now comes via mobile devices. Property portals Visits to its comparison website uSwtich increased by 7% year-on-year, the company says. “We’ve had a great start to the year with a record of over two million visits per day to our websites in January,” says ZPG CEO Alex Chesterman (pictured, left). “These figures demonstrate that consumers are highly engaged with the services we provide and that we continue to deliver incredible exposure, value and results for our partners.” These latest ZPG figures would suggest that Rightmove’s average monthly visitor figure of…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket shares drop by 14% following last week’s AIM launch
Shares in the property industry’s newest public limited company OnTheMarket have dropped by nearly 15% since it floated on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) on Friday morning, including an almost 6% fall today. The share price for the company, which trades as OTMP on the junior stock market, has tumbled by 24p from its initial offer price of £1.63p a share to £1.39p (at the time of writing) cutting the company’s market capitalisation from an initial £100m to £89.59 million, according to Bloomberg. The Financial Times said the portal’s share launch, which offers investors a minority stake in the company, had ‘failed to shine’. These are nerve-wracking times for many of the portal’s 2,700 agent members, who last year voted overwhelmingly to trade in their membership for shares which they are hoping, once their lock-in period ends, they will be able to sell. This is equally true for the company’s key directors including co-founder and CEO Ian Springett (pictured, left). He now holds approximately 90,000 shares in the new PLC allocated to him at entry to AIM, plus nearly three and a half million share options, on top of his £170,000 salary. Several high-profile investors have taken substantial stakes in…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket shares begin trading at £1.63p, plummets to £1.48p
Shares in OnTheMarket began trading on London’s AIM stock market today kicking off at £1.63p, valuing the company at £100 million, and quickly rising by 2p to £1.65 before dropping to £1.48p by end of trading on Friday. The OnThemarket shares issue, which it says has raised £30m out of a hoped-for £50m to finance its battle for market share with Rightmove and ZPG, is the conclusion of a long and tortuous road for CEO Ian Springett’s ambitious portal project. It launched in January 2015 two years after founding members Knight Frank, Savills, Strutt & Parker and Chestertons first convened to form parent company Agents’ Mutual Ltd. OnTheMarket.com positioned itself as a mutual organisation of agent members, but introduced a controversial ‘one other portal’ rules that made agents choose between either Rightmove or Zoopla as their ‘other portal’. Last year agent Gascoigne Halman took OnTheMarket to court, claiming the ‘one other portal’ rule was anti-competitive, but lost the case. This cleared the way for OnTheMarket to demutualise, which took place following a vote of its 2,700 agent members late last year. Former members of the mutual organisation were allocated share options based on their size of listing and length of…
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Latest property news
Proptech firm claims it can help agents banish email ‘tyre kickers’
Estate agents will soon be able to automatically sort out the useful portal email leads from the tyre kickers following the launch of a new proptech service. OneDome says its OneLead product will enable estate agents to respond instantly to any buyer or vendor email enquiry coming in from Rightmove, Zoopla or OnTheMarket and work out which kind of customer they are and then direct them to either a valuations or viewings booking page. The system generates an automated reply answer to an email enquiry depending on the information within it, helping agents answer them more quickly and filtering out the ‘chaff from the wheat’, it is claimed. OneDome says Rightmove’s own figures show that 65% of vendor and buyer leads from the portals arrive out of hours. “Consumer expectations are greater than ever and they expect instant gratification,” says OneDome CEO Babek Ismayil (pictured, left). “When sending an enquiry form from a portal, buyers often get a slow response or no reply at all because agents find that many of the enquiries they get from portals are low quality, or worse, spam. “This discourages agents from responding and unfortunately, this means that high quality enquiries are missed.” The company…
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Features
How did the big property portals take over the industry?
Andrea Kirkby takes a tour through the property portals 10 years on...
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket flotation confirmed alongside sweeteners for agents to sign long-term deals
The long-awaited OnTheMarket flotation on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) is to proceed, it has been confirmed by parent organisation Agents’ Mutual. It is now four months since the vote to demutualise Agents Mutual which was to be followed by the creation of a new company OnTheMarket plc prior to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on AIM. Agents Mutual has yet to announce the new company or IPO, but has revealed that it will introduce “appropriate incentives” to persuade new members to commit to five-year deals with OTM. This will include giving share options to “selected” agents joining the portal if they commit to long-term listings agreement. OnTheMarket flotation But agents who receive equity in OTM following the flotation are to be prevented from cashing in their shares too soon to “align their interests as shareholders with the success of the Group”. OTM has already begun the process of securing five-year deals in return for promises of shares in the company including, most recently, deals announced with Arun Estates, Chancellors and Hunters. But, as previously announced, the £50m it hopes to raise from the City will be spent on marketing and PR to drive traffic to the site and to…
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Latest property news
Hunters’ five-year OnTheMarket deal brings online marketing back to its HQ
The recent deal by stock market-listed estate agency Hunters Property Group to list all its franchisees properties via OnTheMarket.com (OTM) significantly changes the way its franchisees choose how to market their listings, it has been revealed. Until now it is believed that franchised branches were free to choose which portal they list their properties on and, at different times, have signed up to he OTM and either listed with Zoopla or Rightmove. But now that the ‘one other portal’ rule is dead in the water following the recent decision to demutualise OTM’s parent company Agents Mutual and float the portal on the AIM stock market, Hunters has taken the unilateral decision to move all of its franchisees on to OnTheMarket.com. A spokesperson for Hunters, said: “We can’t comment on the extent of the deal yet but we see it as a positive step for the whole network, which will provide the best solution in terms of creating exposure for our properties.” Portal choice Only a handful of Hunters’ franchisees list with Rightmove while 180 list with Zoopla out of its’ total network of more than 200 branches. “Some of the Hunters franchised offices have joined OnTheMarket on an individual basis…
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Latest property news
ZPG results: buying spree dents profits but revenues increase
ZPG has published its full-year results, revealing a substantial increase in turnover but smaller than expected profits. The group, which operates portals Zoopla and PrimeLocation, saw its turnover increase by 24% but profits only rise by 2%, reflecting the costs of its many acquisitions over the past year including – it was announced today – a Dutch AVM provider called Calcasa. It joins other acquisitions including personal finance website money.co.uk, agent software firm Expert Agent, agency website provider TecniWeb, agent print media and signage specialist Ravensworth and data firm Hometrack. This buying spree helped push up ZPG’s debt by £45 million to £191 million, or nearly 80% of its turnover for the year of £244.5 million, while its borrowings have increased in value by £110m to £266m. ZPG says it now has 14,772 branches signed up to its portals, a 6% rise compared to the same time last year, which helped push up revenue within its property arm by 41%. Revenue per branch This, the company says, is in part down to the 1,000 agents it claims have left OnTheMarket and returned to Zoopla over the past 12 months. ZPG also now says it has 969,000 listing on its sites,…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket branch listings sink to all-time low, claims ZPG
The number of branches listing on OnTheMarket has sunk to an all-time low of 5,500 which is 200 fewer than in August when it announced it was de-mutualising ahead of a stock market IPO, it has been claimed by ZPG. The portal giant says the number of branches to have rejoined its portals Zoopla and PrimeLocation after initially leaving to sign up with OnTheMarket has hit 1,000, while claiming that its own listing branches have grown to 14,750. Recent returning customers include 11 Martin & Co franchisee branches, London agency Hurford Salvi Carr’s six branches and Thames Valley and Chilterns agent Andrew Milson’s five branches. Competitive disadvantage “We are continuing to see agencies from around the country re-joining ZPG on a weekly basis as agents increasingly understand that they are at a competitive disadvantage when not partnering with us,” says Mike Goddard, Managing Director of ZPG Property Services. OnTheMarket’s own figures show that in August it had 5,700 agent branches listing properties on its portal, down from its launch total of approximately 6,500 branches, and that it currently has 2,700 estate agent clients. The ongoing agent drain from OnTheMarket to ZPG is puzzling; member agents of OTM’s parent company Agents…
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Latest property news
Arun Estates signs with OnTheMarket ahead of AIM flotation
OnTheMarket (OTM) has signed its first NEW significant agency group following its decision in August to float on the London Stock Exchange AIM market and demutualise. Arun Estates, which encompasses four agent brands and over 100 branches across the South East of England, has signed a five-year listing with the portal. Under the agreement, Arun Estates will advertise all its UK residential sales and letting properties on OnTheMarket.com, and has committed to “actively promote” the portal in its branches. Arun Estates’ best-known grand, Ward & Partners, already lists with both Rightmove and the ZPG portals. “It is a powerful boost to OnTheMarket that Arun Estates is committing to list its properties for five years at OnTheMarket.com,” says OTM Chief Executive Ian Springett (pictured, left) “Arun Estates is undoubtedly one of the leading, most successful agent groups in the regions where it operates and its support will substantially strengthen our position in the market.” Arun Estates, which includes Ward & Partners, Cubitt & West, Douglass Allen and Pittis (on the Isle of Wight), was born out of the sale by Prudential Insurance of its national estate agency business during the early 1980s. Arun Estates has also been busy on other fronts…
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