It has been almost a decade since OnTheMarket, backed by a consortium of heavyweight high street agents, including Savills, Knight Frank and Glentree Estates, launched in a bid to challenge the dominance of Rightmove and Zoopla.
Supported by a multi-million pound marketing media campaign and its ‘one other portal’ rule – which banned its agents advertising on both Rightmove and Zoopla – plus prohibiting online agents from listing, OnTheMarket sought to increase market share, mainly at the expense of Zoopla, which some argue strengthened the position of Rightmove.
Having established itself as the UK’s third largest portal in terms of consumer traffic and agent support, OnTheMarket firmly believed that it was on course to replace Zoopla as the number two property portal by the end of 2016 on its way to achieving its medium-term objective of challenging the market leader, Rightmove.
But due to a lack of consumer traffic it has never quite managed to succeed in regaining power over the homebuyer audience and in turn returning control to the traditional high street brands.
However, while OnTheMarket has so far failed to dislodge Rightmove and Zoopla as the two biggest portals, it has made some inroads into this highly competitive market, and now believes it is destined to reach the top after recently being acquired by CoStar.
Jason Tebb, president of OnTheMarket, commented: “We believe that we are now the fastest growing residential portal in the UK. In a very small space of time following the acquisition of the business, we have initiated the first phase of a multiyear program to drive consumers to OnTheMarket which will significantly increase the quality of valuable leads to our agents at fair and sustainable prices.”
“We believe we can create the number one property portal in the UK, leveraging CoStar Group’s expertise and resources,” he added.
Tebb’s comments come as OTM reveals it shas attracted more than 1,000 new agency members and 57,000 listings since the takeover.
It adds that monthly leads to agents are up 81% since the acquisition and unique monthly visitors have also increased 81% annually. But EYE was unable to verify this data.
We have requested further information, including precise statistics.
