OnTheMarket
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Latest property news
High Court gives OnTheMarket.com flotation green light
The final hurdles that OnTheMarket.com faced in order to float on the London Stock Exchange have been cleared after the High Court of Justice Chancery Division (pictures, right) sanctioned the two key votes on demutualisation completed last week. The court approved the Members Scheme – which enables agents to turn their membership of Agents’ Mutual into shares, and the Loan Notes Scheme, which will see the Notes originally issued to the agents who helped fund the OTM start-up turned into equity. The court decision follows last Friday’s member vote, during which they voted overwhelmingly to convert their existing membership interests into shares, ushering in both a new company to replace Agents’ Mutual – OnTheMarket Ltd – plus the dropping of the ‘one other portal’ rule. “The High Court of Justice Chancery Division this morning sanctioned the Members Scheme and the three Loan Note Schemes which were overwhelmingly endorsed by our Members and Loan Noteholders at the Court Meetings on 6 September,” says Ian Springett, Chief Executive of OnTheMarket. We will now continue to the next stage of the process. OnTheMarket flotation The court decision clears the way for demutualisation, a process that will begin tomorrow before an Initial Public Offering (IPO)…
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Guest Blogs
‘How OnTheMarket was born’
About seven years ago a sales representative from one of the two major portals came to me and asked for a 50% increase in our yearly tariff. I was so horrified at the audacity of this proposal, that I thought I had misheard him. “Did you say 15%”? Even this ‘stuck in my craw’ as it was the equivalent of seven years worth of inflation in one hit. “No” he retorted, “I said 50%”, my worst fears were confirmed. He then tried to diffuse my mounting anger, by sheepishly asking me “not to shoot the messenger”. He explained that it was a diktat from the “head honcho” and there was nothing he could do about it. I said that I would reluctantly pay this outrageous amount, but asked if I could call an end to the meeting, since I had to get to work on an alternative plan for the longer term. What was the Alternative Plan? The plan was to invite 25 of the pivotal residential estate agents across the UK to a secret meeting at Zafferano, a restaurant in Belgravia. Everyone “turned up to a man” without knowing the context. I was flattered. The first question they asked…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket agents vote overwhelmingly to demutualise and float
OnTheMarket is to demutualise and float on the stock market following a vote by its agent members. It is also to drop its controversial ‘one other portal rule’ and will now attempt to raise £50m from City investors. Nearly 90% of agent members of the website’s operator Agents’ Mutual voted to convert their existing membership interests into shares in a new company called OnTheMarket Ltd. Agents’ Mutual says 70% of members voted in person at the meeting in London yesterday or by proxy. After the vote is approved by a court hearing early week the demutualisation will then proceed on 12th September, and following an initial IPO on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) it is expected that some £50m will be raised by offering investors a minority stake in the new business. Advertising campaign This will value OnTheMarket at between £200 and £250 million. The money raise is to be used to take on Rightmove and Zoopla with a huge national advertising campaign on TV, digital and print media as well as significant radio and billboard activity. “I am very pleased at such a resounding demonstration of broad Member support for our strategic proposals for the business,” says Ian Springett,…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket to end mutual status and float on AIM
The parent company of OnTheMarket.com, Agents’ Mutual, is to raise £50m by floating on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange 30 months after the mutually-owned property portal launched. The flotation will value OnTheMarket at between £200 million and £250 million, a sixth the size of nearest rival Zoopla. Much of the money raised from the City will be spent on a huge TV, radio, print and digital advertising campaign to raise awareness among consumers and, no doubt, stop agents jumping ship back to Zoopla. OnTheMarket’s flotation will also require existing agents who list on the site to convert their membership into ordinary shares in the new company, and commit to a further five year agreement to list their properties on OnTheMarket.com. “This is the beginning of a very exicting new chapter in our development,” says Agents Mutual Chief Executive Ian Springett (pictured, left). “For consumer and agents alike we are committed to creating a genuine agent-controlled alternative challenger business and brand to the two leading incumbent portals.” A minority stake will be offered to investors as part of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of new equity which will be used to give OnTheMarket the sort of…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket wins claim against Gascoigne Halman in long-awaited tribunal decision
OnTheMarket has won the Competition Appeal Tribunal case it brought against Gascoigne Halman after the agent, following its acquisition in October 2015 by Connells, refused to abide by OnTheMarket’s ‘one other portal rule’. After the ruling OnTheMarket Chief Executive Ian Springett (pictured, below) accused Zoopla of funding the action, and also said that he intended to recoup legal and other court costs from Gascoigne Halman, particularly so because “the manner in which our opponents conducted the case has caused us to divert considerable resources and management time”. Gascoigne Halman said during the hearings that its contract with OnTheMarket was in effect void because what it believed are restrictive clauses within it were in breach of Section 2 of the Competition Act 1988. These include the ‘one other portal rule’ which requires participating agents to only use two property portals, the ‘bricks and mortar rule’ prohibiting online agents from joining OnTheMarket, and the ‘exclusive promotion rule’ that prevents agents from promoting their membership of Rightmove or Zoopla. The legal process was triggered when Gascoigne Halman listed its properties on all three property portals in defiance of OnTheMarket. OnThemarket subsequently sought a judgement on the matter through the tribunal system to prove…
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Latest property news
Over 800 OnTheMarket agents have returned to ZPG, says Goddard
ZPG has today claimed that 808 branches have returned to its portals over the past two years from rival OnTheMarket.com since Agents Mutual launched it in 2015. And ZPG senior figure Mark Goddard (pictured, left), who heads up its Property Services division, has gone on the attack, saying that agents who spend their marketing budgets on OnTheMarket are doing so “inefficiently”. Recent returnees include 16 agency branches which ZPG says have moved over during the past week, helping increase its returning total by 58 since it last reported on its attempt to persuade agents back from OnTheMarket. This was within its 24th May half-year results. “We do not comment on individual agent relationships but the facts remain the same as they did last week when Zoopla gave a similar update,” says Ian Springett, Chief Executive of Agents’ Mutual (pictured, right). “OnTheMarket.com continues to have a positive material impact on the property portals landscape.” “Many thousands of agents switched from Zoopla/Primelocation to join us. Many thousands of agents continue to support the objectives of the business by creating a genuine alternative portal for consumers and agents alike. Many thousands of agents have not returned to ZPG portals with their advertising budgets…
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Latest property news
Big three portal traffic approaches 200 million visits a month
Both Zoopla Property Group (ZPG) and OnTheMarket have reported record traffic during January while Righmove appears to have stopped reporting its traffic entirely, although total portal traffic to the three sites is likely to be just under 200 million visits a month. But both ZPG and OnTheMarket have at least stopped throwing brickbats at each other and neither of their traffic reports mention each other, a change from recent times when both sides have questioned their competitor’s figures. ZPG says visits to its property sites Zoopla and Primelocation increased to a record of 53 million during January driven largely by mobile-based searches, which now constitute 72% of its traffic. The company also says the number of leads it generated increased by 73% year-on-year which, it says, are worth £50 million to its partner agents. “This is a great start to the year for both the business and the property market,” says Mark Goddard, MD of ZPG’s property division (pictured, left). “The numbers demonstrate that we continue to deliver incredible exposure, value and results for our partners.” OnTheMarket also had a record January, it says, receiving 11.2 million visits, an increase of 85% on the same month last year, when just…
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Latest property news
Zoopla claims 700 branches have now returned from OTM
Zoopla parent company ZPG has today claimed that over 100 branches who initially left for OnTheMarket have returned to it since October, bringing the total number of returnees to 700. The company says recent returnees have included a clutch of multi-branch agents (see list below) and that the number of total property listings on its two sites (Zoopla and Primelocation) has increased by 10% compared to a year ago. Bacon & Co, (West Sussex) – 5 branches Jeanes Holland Burnell (mid-Somerset) – 3 branches Belvoir (Central London) – 1 branch Porter Glenny (Barking) – 4 branches Dixon & Co. (Stafford) – 2 branches Reid & Roberts (North Wales) – 3 branches Roberts & Co. (South East Wales) – 11 branches Sheens (Essex) – 2 branches Hodders (Surrey) – 4 branches Corrie & Co. (Cumbria) – 3 branches Loveitts (Midlands) – 5 branches Ian Odam of Somerset agency Jeanes Holland Burnell (pictured, left), says that in January 2015 he decided to join OnTheMarket after leaving ZPG. “After two years of supporting the OTM project we felt unable to sustain the membership with them any longer as we believed we were missing out by not listing our stock with ZPG,” he says. “In…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket launches ‘heavyweight’ ad campaign
As the second anniversary of OnTheMarket.com looms next week, the portal has announced that it is launching a “heavyweight investment” in marketing campaigns both on Google and TV during 2017. This includes TV ad spots on up to 40 channels including More4, E4, Sky 1, Sky Atlantic, Sky Sports and Sky News and support for more traffic via Google search spend. The company has also highlighted agent enthusiasm for its portal from several multi-branch agents across the UK including Peter Symons of Stags, Tim des Forges from the Knightsbridge branch of JLL and Simon Hill of northern Home Counties agent Michael Graham. The three testimonials highlighted by OnTheMarket.com chief executive Ian Springett were all published in October and November last year. “We look forward to building on our successes and we remain as committed as ever to our long-term strategic objective of building the best portal for agents and consumers alike,” says Springett (pictured). The portal is highly secretive about how many agents have joined – or left – its service but a comparative study of its agent branch inventory reveals numbers are increasing compared to a year ago, despite reports of some agents leaving in recent months. For example, in December…
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Latest property news
OTM drops ‘one other portal rule’ for commercial property launch
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…
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