OnTheMarket
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Marketing
Property portal supremacy
Marc Da Silva asks, “which portal is winning the battle for agents?”
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Marketing
Blow for Zoopla as Chestertons leaves the portal
Zoopla was dealt a blow last week as Chestertons, one of London’s largest estate agencies with 30 offices across the city, announced that it would be leaving the site in to list its properties with Rightmove. The firm, a founding member of Agents’ Mutual, continues to list properties on OnTheMarket (OTM) and is therefore not permitted to list homes on more than one other rival website, under OTM’s ‘one other portal’ rule requiring, in effect, their member agents to stop advertising on either Rightmove or Zoopla. The typical scenario has an agent sticking with Rightmove and choosing between OTM and Zoopla, so Chestertons is unusual. “We had more and more of our clients telling us that they expected to see us on Rightmove and you have to listen to your clients,” said Chestertons Chief Executive Robert Bartlett. The launch of OTM earlier this year had an adverse impact on Zoopla’s business. A number of agents have cancelled their subscriptions with the online property giant in order to list homes with OTM. OTM is now claiming to be on course to replace Zoopla as the number two property portal by the end of 2016 on its way to achieving their medium-term…
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Latest property news
Country Life teams up with OnTheMarket
OnTheMarket (OTM) has formed an exclusive partnership arrangement with Country Life to create a co-branded online UK property search on the Country Life website which has already gone live. Providing authoritative coverage of the British art and antiques world, property, events and exhibitions as well as commentary on rural life in the UK, Country Life, which is owned by Time Inc UK, is one of the UK’s most iconic magazine brands, and is renowned for featuring many of the country’s finest prime homes. The property market has always been one of Country Life’s key priorities, both in their weekly magazine and online, according to Jean Christie, Country Life Publishing Director; “We work closely with high-end agents to provide a unique environment that attracts a discerning and high net worth audience, who have the money to invest in beautiful houses.” Christie added, “We’ve seen the tremendous success of OnTheMarket.com in attracting so many of the leading prime agents in the UK and we envisage the business continuing to grow. We see a major opportunity for our readers, for our website users, for our agent advertisers and for our business in providing a co-branded online search service, powered by OnTheMarket.com.” A recent…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket openly questions Zoopla’s inventory claims
The war between OnTheMarket (OTM) and Zoopla continues this week, with Agents’ Mutual now querying the listings inventory detailed in Zoopla’s recent half-year trading statement. In its trading statement earlier this month, Zoopla Property Group stated that its listings inventory had increased by seven per cent from 828,000 on 1 April to 882,000 on 31 July. But whilst Zoopla’s UK sales and lettings search pages claimed property numbers totalling 878,288, OTM questions this rise by stating that searches conducted on the Zoopla website on 12 August returned only 675,540 properties in England, Scotland and Wales. “It is interesting to note that Zoopla has since reduced the claimed property numbers on its UK sales and lettings search pages so that the total now comes to 692,058 [as at 22 August]”, the statement from OTM noted. The figure of 692,058 for UK sales and lettings properties includes Shared Accommodation, which are provided by EasyRoomMate, and listings which are Sold Subject to Contract or Let, according to OTM. OTM suggested that Zoopla may have also been including its overseas property listings within the UK residential property figures. The statement added, “Zoopla’s Overseas Sales page now shows a figure for properties for sale which,…
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Marketing
Zoopla returns to growth
Zoopla ended last week as the one of the highest risers on the FTSE 350, as it returned to growth, the portal announced last week. According to its latest trading update, the property website has attracted a net rise of 213 branches in the four months to 31st July. The news triggered a ratings upgrade for Zoopla from ‘sell’ to ‘buy’, with Broker Panmure Gordon suggesting that shares in the portal look undervalued. Zooplalost a significant number of agency subscribers due largely to the launch of OnTheMarket (OTM) earlier this year and its restrictive ‘only one other’ portal rule. However, the group said that it had won back 100 agents in recent months – many from OTM – with market churn also nearing historic levels, according to Zoopla. The group also announced that the volume of people visiting its website remained flat at 45.6 million, which is significantly below Righmove, but towers above OTM’s 5.2 million visitors. Panmure Gordon analyst Jonathan Helliwell told the press that “near-term, OTM’s growth appears to have stalled.” He added, “Zoopla’s inventory and traffic are holding up pretty well, and the housing market looks to be picking up. We think the stock could continue to…
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Latest property news
Portal brand awareness report puts Zoopla on top
Despite a sharp rise in the number of number of estate agents which have cancelled their subscriptions to Zoopla over the past year or so, with many of those agents opting to join rival site OnTheMarket.com (OTM), Zoopla has still seen a significant increase in website traffic, thanks largely to a high level of consumer brand awareness, new research shows. A study, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Zoopla Property Group, claims that more people have heard of Zoopla than any of the other UK property portals, including Rightmove. “This research reinforces how the Zoopla brand remains front of mind with consumers when thinking of property search and research,” said Lawrence Hall (left) of ZPG. But despite achieving a high level of national consumer brand awareness than any other UK property portal, Zoopla has seen the volume of estate agents listing their properties for sale and to let on their website drop by around a quarter over the past 12 months, largely due to the launch of OTM earlier this year. OTM, solely owned by the agents that list on the website, with more than 5,000 estate agency offices now signed up, has had a dramatic early impact on…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket posts record traffic
OnTheMarket (OTM) reports that the level of traffic and unique visitors to the portal hit a record high in June. Based on Google Analytics data, the property website claims it recorded 4.4 million visits, with more than 2 million unique visitors. Ian Springett (left), Chief Executive of OTM, said, “We are continuing to see strong engagement from consumers in terms of pages viewed per visit and time on site and a high percentage of repeat visitors. “This reflects both the quality and range of agents and properties listed with us and the usability of the portal. “Our ongoing multi-million pound national TV, press and online advertising campaigns continue to work really hard at driving active property seekers to OTM.” With membership now at more than 5,000 offices and growing, and with around a quarter of member offices uploading their properties to OTM ahead of any other portal, Springett insists that OTM “is already a must-view website for the key audience of serious property-seekers”. Springett remains confident that OTM will replace Zoopla to become the number two portal by the end of January 2016 on their way to achieving their medium term objective of challenging the market leader, Rightmove. But for…
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Latest property news
Zoopla-OTM battle will “strengthen Rightmove’s dominance”
With membership now at more than 5,000 offices and with a significant number of member offices uploading their properties to the website ahead of any other portal, OnTheMarket.com (OTM) has already established itself as one of the UK’s leading property portals, but it is Rightmove that is expected to benefit the most from the launch of OTM, it has been claimed. An article on the popular investment website, The Motley Fool UK says that dominance by one company is commonplace in the internet industry, highlighting that the likes of Google, Facebook and eBay dominate their respective sectors. “Size matters, because of network effects and economies of scale,” it said. But although Rightmove is the biggest online property portal by traffic, it points to the fact that the website “still faces stiff competition from Zoopla.” “Innovations ranging from calculating the distance to the nearest railway station and archived listings have helped Zoopla to stay in a strong second place position,” it added. Only last week, Zoopla Property Group (ZPG) launched its Real-Time Listings Service, allowing its members to send updates to property listings on ZPG websites within minutes of being updated on the agent or developer’s system or website. The service…
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Latest property news
Online marketing strategy vital for estate agency success
A new survey of over 4,000 homeowners by Zoopla Property Group (ZPG) reveals that 94.2 percent expect their agent to automatically maximise the marketing exposure of their property, which includes listing the property on the major property websites.
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Latest property news
Zoopla hires tech heavyweight to tackle OTM
Zoopla is clearly hoping to hire its way to victory in the battle with OnTheMarket, if its more recent addition to the website’s senior team is anything to go by. ZPG today announced that Vin Murria, one of the UK’s leading tech entrepreneurs and winner of the Cisco Technology Woman of the Year gong in 2012, is to join the group as a non-executive director. Murria has an impressive CV of starting or heading up companies that go on to be sold for £100m or more including, most recently, Advanced Software Group plc, an AIM-listed healthcare and business management software solutions company she founded in 2008. Her appointment is designed to help Zoopla, which has been looking increasingly beleaguered recently in the face of OTM competition, to gain the initiative. As well as mounting an aggressive campaign to rubbish OTM, Zoopla has been buying up companies recently to build a property-related portfolio including in April this year, Uswitch.com for £160m. Murria’s expertise in this type of ‘acquire to grow’ way of doing business is clearly a skillset that DPG chairman Alex Chesterman, who built Zoopla largely by snapping up struggling portals such as FindaProperty, Propertyfinder and ThinkProperty, admires. And although…
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