OnTheMarket enters Northern Ireland's portal sector...

OnTheMarket, the property portal founded by Agents' Mutual, has announced its launch in Northern Ireland.

The website is aiming to go head-to-head with Northern Ireland's leading property search websites PropertyPal.com and PropertyNews.com as well as Zoopla.

The portal, which celebrated its one-year anniversary in January, says it is already carrying thousands of listings from estate and letting agents in Northern Ireland.

As of this morning - when OnTheMarket officially launched in Northern Ireland - it has 393 properties listed for sale in Belfast, compared to 322 on Zoopla and over 1,800 on both PropertyPal and PropertyNews.

Rightmove's presence in Northern Ireland is almost non-existent with just nine properties listed for sale in Belfast, eight of which are supplied by online or hybrid estate agents.

“Having made tremendous progress in England, Scotland and Wales over the last year, we are proud to present OnTheMarket.com in Northern Ireland as a much-needed competitor in the online property search market,” says Helen Whiteley, OnTheMarket's Commercial Director.

"We have worked closely with the agents in Northern Ireland to prepare for this latest launch and look forward to growing our presence still further over the coming months and years.”

The portal's press release also quotes Kevin Mitchell MRICS of Templeton Robinson, a firm which now lists all of its properties with OnTheMarket.

“The achievements of OnTheMarket.com over the last year have been outstanding, it is already established as a major portal,” he says.

“The website is refreshing because it provides property-seekers with hundreds of thousands of properties for sale or to rent with clear information without distracting data.”

OnTheMarket says it is now attracting more than 6 million visits per month and that its support of more than 6,500 estate and letting agent offices on its first anniversary marked an increase of more than 50% when compared with its launch date.

The portal reports that it is still working towards its next major milestone – securing support from 7,500 offices.

*The stock figures originally quoted in this story have been updated to reflect this morning's listings, when OTM officially launched in Northern Ireland.

Fake Agent
15 March 2016 09:02 AM

Haha! Indeed. "We're the fourth biggest portal in Northern Ireland, don'tcha know." "Right, out of how many?" "Four. But still, we're ahead of Rightmove." "But Rightmove don't have much of a presence in NI, do they?" "No, but that's not the point. This is good, positive news. We're growing exponentially, honest we are."