Property portal OnTheMarket is expected to announce a record 5m visitors to its site in July, marking its first six months.
The announcement is due at the end of this week, as July comes to a close.
Ian Springett, Chief Executive of the website, said yesterday that in its first six months, OnTheMarket has “achieved what no other property portal has managed to do in recent years,” creating a huge change in the market.
He also thanked agents for their support and confirmed beliefs that the new portal is the strongest for full-service agents.
Recognising the power struggle that is in its future, Springett upheld OnTheMarket’s ambitions to challenge giants Rightmove and Zoopla.
Springett says: “OnTheMarket has contributed much-needed competition as a credible, growing challenger brand and business, providing consumers with a first-class digital searching platform.
“For such a new venture, levels of traffic have been impressive and are continuing to grow. Businesses do not launch and become market leaders overnight.
“We have received excellent support from an increasing number of agents who recognise the need to challenge the duopoly that Rightmove and Zoopla have enjoyed in the property portal market.”
He continues: “We are extremely pleased with our progress, both in terms of members signing up but also in terms of our appeal to consumers, with an anticipated 5m visits to the portal in July.
“The website is delivering increasing numbers of quality leads to our members and a clean, fast service to our visitors, who for too long have had cluttered property presentation and potentially misleading tools and features, which detract from the properties themselves.
“We continue to see impressive levels of returning visitors to the site as well as high volumes of new ones.
“Consumers and agents have given positive feedback on the site’s speed, as well as its clear format and responsive design.
“Our members – and our property seekers – know that the properties being marketed will not be mixed in with those of online-only property marketers or private vendors.
“Every property listed with us is on the market with high street estate and letting agents, who offer a wealth of experience and local market knowledge and a full end-to-end service to their vendors and landlords.
“These office-based agents benefit from differentiating their offering from the remotely-located, part-service, online-only offerings, which often consist of little more than a listing on their own website and on two of the three major property portals.
“Equally, property seekers enjoy the reassurance that every property is listed with agents who they can deal with face-to-face, who can help them organise viewings directly and who can provide solid locally-based advice.”
Springett addresses future competition: “You can see across other sectors, such as retail (Amazon), computing (Microsoft) and even search marketing itself (Google), that a challenge must be made to ensure that one or two companies do not become all-powerful.
“With the introduction of OnTheMarket, our members have injected more choice into the market and are pursuing a longer term strategy to prevent dominance of the portals market by just two firms.”1
1 http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/onthemarket-set-to-announce-record-5m-visitors-this-month/