OnTheMarket has now signed listing agreements with UK estate and letting agents with a total of over 10,000 offices - but it warns charges will rise in the future.
In a trading statement this morning it says over 4,500 branches have been added to the portal’s inventory since OTM was listed on the Stock Exchange on February 9 and believes its current total represents approximately 54 per cent of UK residential estate and lettings agency branches.
The portal now carries over 570,000 UK residential properties, “well in excess of half the total market” it believes.
However, it adds that growth to date “has been predominantly from offering free listings under short term introductory trial offers, with a view to converting these to full tariff contracts when the value of its offering has been demonstrated.”
No other details of future charging arrangements have been revealed this morning.
Traffic to the portal in the current financial year from February 1 to the end of June was 56.6m visits, more than double the traffic of 27.1m visits generated in the same period in 2017 according to its measure, taken via Google Analytics.
The statement continues: “As a key driver to success in rapidly building its agent base, the company continues to invest in expanding its sales team: at admission [to the Stock Market] the field sales team numbered 15 employees; as at 24 July this had more than doubled to 31; and the plan is for the team to have grown even further to 35 by the end of the summer. The team is continuing to see encouragingly high levels of agent support and conversion to signed contracts when it presents the opportunity of listing on an agent-backed portal.”
Chief executive Ian Springett adds:"We are very excited to have reached the significant milestone of 10,000 contracted agent offices less than six months after OnTheMarket's Admission to [the junior Stock Market] AIM alongside our capital raise.
"We have seen and felt the momentum build strongly behind our disruptive strategy for sustainable fair pricing from an agent-backed portal. Our agent offices, our property listings and our traffic have all increased substantially since admission. We remain confident of our ability to deliver a challenger portal that provides much-needed competition in the marketplace."
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Terrible company. We've heard so many stories of small, independent agents being taken advantage of by OnTheMarket.com - they only want the larger corporates, it appears. We've met several small agents OnTheMarket.com have broke contract with costing them thousands.
You are right Andrew. Plenty of agents are getting ripped off thinking they have to use these companies. We work with lots of independent Estate Agents who believed they had to be using such companies, we have created ways now so they can be successful and generate their own leads. It's not too late!
Mmm! 4,500 new signings since OTM listed, all listing for free. Being early bird members we have contracts assuring us that no other later joiner would ever pay less than us yet here are 4,500 estate agents getting for free what we are paying full fat for.
By charging them nothing Springett got around his promise.
With Zoopla and Rightmove getting stronger daily I think its time OTM dropped their 'disruptor' claim as the only disrupting OTM has managed is to our profitability. If we want to be competitive, we all have to pay for three portals. Ooops! That is unless you are enjoying free listings on OTM of course. Can someone please pass the KY
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