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Latest property news
OnTheMarket has been signing up 16 new agents a day since flotation
OnThemarket’s strategy to sign up more agents on the back of its recent AIM listing appear to be working. The formerly mutual portal has signed up 243 additional sales and letting agents to its service, up from the 81 revealed just after its shares were listed on AIM ten days ago. The portal also says independent agency group Chancellors has begun listing its properties on the portal. In November Chancellors agreed to sign a five-year listing deal, but only if OnTheMarket successfully achieved an AIM flotation. This means Chancellors’ 53 sales and lettings branches, which range across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Herefordshire London, Oxfordshire, Powys and Surrey are now listing their properties on both OnTheMarket, Zoopla and Rightmove. The portal says Chancellors’ listing is evidence that agent support for the portal, which is now valued at £101.4 million following the AIM launch, is growing. Chancellors has agreed to more than just a listing with OnTheMarket, though. The company has agreed to actively promote the OnTheMarket.com portal brand with digital and branch-based marketing activity. Chancellors Group Chancellors, which used to be known as Hogg Robinson Property Services, in 2016 generated profits of £2.5 million on a turnover of £26.6 million, its latest accounts…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket founding agency Douglas & Gordon signs up with ZPG
Douglas & Gordon, one of the most vocal founding members of OnTheMarket.com, has returned to ZPG on an unspecified but likely five-year deal. The 18-branch agency, which is one of London’s better-known agency brands, has signed up with ZPG after OnTheMarket dropped its one other portal rule ahead of the portal’s recent stock market flotation although it “remains a strong supporter and investor in OnTheMarket and has recently signed a new five-year listing agreement with us,” an OTM spokesperson told The Negotiatotor. Douglas & Gordon continues to list its properties on Rightmove as well, suggesting a new trend in the industry following the OTM share launch; that agents with generous marketing budgets will now choose to list with all three portals. Douglas & Gordon was one of several high profile agents who founded OnTheMarket in 2015 including Savills, Strutt & Parker, Knight Frank, Chestertons and Glentree Estates following two years of behind-the-scenes discussions. James Evans (pictured, left), Douglas & Gordon’s current CEO, says, “We are delighted to be marketing all of our property listings with ZPG again. “ZPG have historically served our business very well and have considerably developed their platform over the past few years in terms of the…
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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
First property, now petrol for serial investor and Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman
Zoopla founder and ZPG CEO Alex Chesterman (pictured, right) has been revealed as a key investor in an unusual, if not bizarre, new business start-up, which is his 12th to date. Zebra Fuels offers vehicle owners a new service that enables their car, van, lorry or bus to be filled up while they are parked up. Founders Reda Bennis and Romain Saint Guilhem (pictured, LtoR, below) have raised $2.5 million from several new investors including Brent Hoberman, founder of Lastminute.com, and Saul Klein, a co-founder founder of Lovefilm with Alex Chesterman. The duo say they hope to make petrol stations “obsolete”. After signing up to the Zebra Fuel app, customers then pick a time and date to have their car filled up and leave their vehicle parked at a specified location with its fuel cap open. The company, which currently only operates in central London and offers just diesel, is hoping to use the extra cash to expand to a London-wide service and offer both petrol deliveries and electric car charging. “Our goal is to replace the petrol station and in doing so make filling up your car faster, cheaper, less harmful to the environment, and hassle-free,” Reda Bennis told…
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Zoopla apologises for ‘me too’ hermit crab advert after it whips up Twitter storm
Zoopla has apologised after the latest version of its hermit crab advert campaign whipped up a Twitter storm and prompted one member of the public to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ad (pictured, right), which is currently running on the London underground and features a line of hermit crabs each answering “Me too” to the statement “I’m selling my house on Zoopla”, upset many people on social media because of its unintended link to the global #metoo movement triggered by the revelations of sexual harassment within the Hollywood film industry. Hundreds of people took to Twitter to vent their anger, calling out the portal for “for misrepresenting the hastag #metoo” as one post put it, and that it was in “poor taste” and “repulsive hijacking”. But following the complaint to the ASA, a spokesperson for the advertising watchdog disagreed, saying that “while the ad does use the phrase ‘me too’ we consider that viewers of the ad are likely to interpret its use as the crabs all agreeing to sell their houses on Zoopla, rather than a reference to recent sexual harassment claims and the resulting #metoo campaign”. Several Twitter accounts also rose to the defence of the…
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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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Latest property news
ZPG refinances its debt following recent business buying spree
Zoopla parent company ZPG has revealed that it is to restructure its debt by raising £200 million through a bond or ‘senior notes’ issue. ZPG says the bonds will become due for repayment in five years’ time and will help it refinance its debt by securing more “attractive interest rates” until 2023. This gives it a further three years of breathing space – its existing debt, which is part of a £325 million facility, is due for repayment in 2020. In ZPG’s most recent financial report for 2017, the company says it spent £97.5 million repaying debt, up from £52.5 million during 2016. The bond issue, which will not be public and will be offered to investors through different financial channels, follows a significant spending spree by the company which has seen it acquire several businesses. Expensive acquisitions This has included most recently – and expensively – the acquisition of financial products website Money for £80m and Dutch property data firm Calcasa for £26.5 million. Within its latest results published late last year, ZPG revealed that it had a net debt (borrowings minus cash in the bank) of £191.5 million, up from £146.5 million in 2016, although its total borrowings…
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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
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 takes legal action to prevent agency’s return to ZPG
OnTheMarket has taken legal action against one of its departing agents just hours after it had announced a return to ZPG’s portals. West-Sussex 15-branch agency Henry Adams had announced it was to leave OnTheMarket and rejoin Zoopla, its Chief Executive Philip Jordan (pictured, below) saying he was “very pleased to be back with ZPG”. The agency is based in Chichester but has branches in other parts of West Sussex as well as in Surrey and Hampshire. The corks were also flying at ZPG’s headquarters in London as Mark Goddard, ZPG’s Managing Director of Property Service, sounded equally ecstatic, saying he was “delighted to welcome back Henry Adams”. But the move proved too quick for OnTheMarket, which promptly issued legal proceedings preventing the move. Media coverage An OnTheMarket spokesperson said: “”We noted media coverage on 15 November 2017 that Henry Adams had signed an agreement with Zoopla to list all of its properties on its websites. “As at 16 November 2017, Henry Adams is not listing its properties on any of the ZPG websites. “The firm continues to list its properties at OnTheMarket.com in accordance with its current listing agreement and remains a valued member.” ZPG confirmed that the move by Henry Adams…
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