OnTheMarket trails in value-for-money portal league table

A report drawn up by a software firm analyses sales, lettings and valuation leads from agents listing on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket - and the results are startling.

The study looked at listings between July 2020 and January 2021 and found Zoopla offered the best value for money per converted lead with an average cost of £83.92.

OnTheMarket’s cost per lead was almost double at £161.76 while Rightmove’s cost per converted lead came out as £112.15.

When tracking all incoming leads and outcomes, none of the portals achieved more than three per cent success. 

The research - by Homehere - found Rightmove converted 2.65 per cent of leads into a sale or rental, Zoopla 1.9 per cent and OnTheMarket just 1.0 per cent.

Valuation leads also showed a big difference between portals with Rightmove delivering 54 per cent of all email valuation leads to participating agents, Zoopla 43 per cent and OnTheMarket three per cent.

“Areas that we thought the portals would be stronger in, such as valuation leads, actually aren’t, with very few of them actually converting to instructions” says Lou Quinn, founder of Homehere, who says he’s published the data to bring transparency to discussions of portal performance.

He says he was shocked, too, at the number of late leads – those that arrive after a property has been taken off the market.

OnTheMarket reported 40 per cent of late leads compared to six per cent from Zoopla and five from Rightmove.

“The data suggests that there's areas that the portals can improve on, maybe focusing more on quality over quantity” says Quinn, who promises to publish this data as a quarterly report.