Rightmove has grabbed market share from OnTheMarket according to a report from City analysts Liberum and is now the ‘portal of choice’ thanks to OTM’s one other portal rule.
The analysts at Liberum operate what they call a “trend tracker” which for each of the past seven quarters has asked a sample of the public the same question: “Which property portal do you use when searching for sales/lettings?”
Liberum’s latest results, sent to investors yesterday, states: “OnTheMarket has lost share to other property portals in this quarter’s survey whilst 53 per cent of respondents said they would use Rightmove when looking for sales.”
It said that Rightmove strengthened its position from previous quarters on lettings, too - 51 per cent of respondents said they would use RM while both Zoopla and OnTheMarket lost share to other property websites.
The analysts say unequivocally that Rightmove has gained share as a result of OTM’s 'only one other portal' rule but it notes that “This controversial rule is now getting pushback from some in the industry.”
Liberum's analysis quotes the recent open letter from Richard Rawlings and statistician Bradley Payne who complained that the only one other portal rule "has led, not only to a decline in transactions, but also to a decline in new instructions because many people are not bringing their house to market (or are withdrawing it) simply because they do not believe they will find anywhere to buy".
It also cites the EAT report on the central London agency Crayson returning to Rightmove because of OTM’s relatively low traffic levels and numbers of leads.
OnTheMarket has rejected the claims of Rawlings and says it does not comment on individual clients’ contractual positions.
The Liberum report concludes: “The cost of listing on property portals is very small for an estate agent as a percentage of revenues. We see little incentive for estate agents to leave the clear market leader as the shift to online sales continues. In short, we have seen Rightmove evolve into the UK property portal of choice.”
The full report is here.
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What a strange report - very stating the obvious to me.
'We have seen Rightmove evolve into the UK property portal of choice' - hasn't it been for the past decade??
'Rightmove has grabbed market share from OnTheMarket' - didn't RM have all the majority of market share in the first place?
'We see little incentive for estate agents to leave the clear market leader as the shift to online sales continues.' - Sorry what shift to online sales? Still a very small percentage of the market last time anyone checked.
As Basil Fawlty once said, can we get Liberum on Mastermind with the specialist subject of stating the bleeding obvious.
Did we really need a City analyst to tell us what we all knew already, what we've already been told by other City analysts for the last six months?
When you are the smallest player, with the smallest budget, one should not look to get into the same advertising channel ring i.e. TV and try and slug it out. OTM should have put all their money into a channel that is accessed by 36 million adults in the UK every month, at times 30-100 times a day; FACEBOOK
From the money they could have spent there instead they'd have created such an impact more people would know them, the traffic sent to their website would have given them a huge amount of data, leads for their clients and they'd have made of bank of users they could re-target or even offer other advertisers email campaigns etc.
Taking over a medium and creating IMPACT is what it should have been about. Let the big boys spend their 10s 20s 30s millions of pounds on TV or posters of whatever. If OTM spent all their small millions on Facebook they'd have punched harder, faster and been more in a user's face everyday. If indeed they'd used their TV ad their too they'd have bought more eyeballs than TV too.
It all sounds so simple, and perhaps even a step too far and brave, but it reminds me of Renault who jumped out of ITV and piled into Channel 4 at the channel's birth and dominated the channel for a few years with 2 out of 3 ad breaks showing their cars. It grew Renault's share amazingly in a far more crowded and ruthless competitive market.
If you can dominate a medium more than half the adult population looks at countless times a day, one click away from your site, that allows you to share your offering with friends and oozes data to learn from, plus your competitors don't invest in it much generally then go for it I say.
Perhaps they need a rethink... perhaps others do too...
"Rightmove now 'portal of choice' thanks to OnTheMarket say analysts."
Tell us something we didn't know.
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