Portals: Rightmove visits up 22% while 'landlords don...

Two new reports add fuel to the continuing debate over portals.

Firstly Rightmove claims to have had its busiest-ever May, with 115m visits to the website - exceeding the total for May last year by 22 per cent.

The portal claims this is equivalent to every adult in the UK visiting Rightmove twice during the month.

In addition the busiest ever single day for visits to Rightmove was recorded on Tuesday May 19 - the website says this indicates home-hunters took less than two weeks after the general election to get back into their searching stride.

This is despite a 3.9 per cent month-on-month fall in new listings on the portal as a result of stagnation in some parts of the housing market, with fewer properties being placed on sale in the month since the election than in the month before it.

Meanwhile a survey of private landlords by Landlord Today, a sister publication of Estate Agent Today, shows that only 39 per cent had heard of OnTheMarket.

Of a sample of 373 individual private landlords questioned in early June, some 369 answered the question 'Have you heard of OnTheMarket?'.

Of these, 61 per cent had not heard of the new portal while 39 per cent had heard of it.

Of those landlords who had heard of OTM, some 88 per cent wanted their property listed on Zoopla and Rightmove. Meanwhile of those landlords who had not head of OTM, some 72 per cent still wanted their property listed on both Zoopla and Rightmove.

When looked at in terms of size of property portfolio, 100 per cent of landlords with 10 or more properties had heard of OTM. This fell to 80 per cent of those with six to 10 units.

However, no landlord with fewer than six properties had heard of OnTheMarket.