OnTheMarket says it has now struck listing agreements with 7,500 agency branches, adding over 2,000 branches since floating on the London stock market in February.
In a statement to shareholders this morning it says: “The offering of predominantly free or discounted introductory rates is a key element of the company’s growth strategy, which aims to increase the core agent customer base, the number of their property listings on the portal and the traffic the portal attracts.”
The firm says it has also more than doubled its sales team from 15 to 32 people.
Back in March OTM announced that traffic to the portal reached 12m in the first full month after its float.
However, its share price as of yesterday remained for 15 per cent below launch value.
Ian Springett, OnTheMarket chief executive, says: "We are extremely pleased to be continuing to exceed our own expectations and to have reached this latest milestone. As we sustain this pace, we are strongly encouraged by the growing agent support and feedback to our proposition to create an agent-backed, full scale challenger portal that disrupts the existing duopoly."
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Finding it hard to understand why agents feel they need to advertise on Rightmove, Zoopla and On The Market when only one or two online locations really count for buyers to find properties for sale and that's Google, Bing and Facebook along with the very trusted and proven For Sale Board which still to date introduces more buyers and sellers than any other method.
With voice search and AI coming more and more in the next few years I'm of the opinion that the search engines will end up bypassing the middle men.
Interesting to see what the AI and voice search brings. Rightmove and Zoopla do bring in leads at the moment but once consumer trends start to change to newer technology, it will be interesting to see which way Rightmove go in particular. At the end of the day if the public want you on a platform then you need to be on there - then its simply up to you how much more you spend, if at all.
Regarding On the Market itself you have to simply judge on the same criteria 'Does my consumer ask me about On The Market?' If they do then it forms some justification to consider perhaps.
Those that have signed up will say 'what have I got to lose - its FREE for the moment?' But once they are on for 6 months and inevitably get a few leads through due to SEO, this will possibly form some justification for staying on the platform.... whilst all along the share price will grow due to confidence that the portal may be viable after all. And then again you could always use that classic estate agent line 'I just need one listing to pay for it'!!!
The irony of an agent being on OTM along with RM and Zoopla should not be lost however.
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