Crucial week for agents giving notice to existing portals

Agents who have to give up using one or more portals to conform with Agents' Mutual's rule have only until the end of this week to give 30 days' notice if they want to be on the new website from day one.

Agents' Mutual's challenger portal, OnTheMarket - launching on January 26 - has a rule saying advertising agents can be on only one other portal at most.

Last Friday evening - after the end of the last full week of business for the year - Strutt & Parker issued a press release saying it was following in the footsteps of other high-end agents Knight Frank and Savills in dropping Zoopla and retaining Rightmove.

The statement from Strutts, one of the six high-end agents which founded Agents' Mutual, makes it clear its decision is based on the supposed high end nature of OnTheMarket.

The first of four reasons it gives for supporting the new portal is that it will carry properties from all the key premium national estate agents.

The other reasons are an attractive easy-to-use search facility, freedom from the clutter of third-party advertising and - controversially - an offer of early bird' listing for new properties, 48 hours ahead of other portals.

This suggests some agents advertising on OnTheMarket may hold back listing clients' properties on other portals for two days.

Fiona Stewart, head of marketing at Strutt & Parker, says in the statement: We have spent time reviewing all of our portal and online marketing plans to ensure that we have the best overall digital strategy in place for 2015. This is similar to the rationale given by Knight Frank and Savills in recent weeks.

Another founding agency, Chestertons - which operates within the M25 in the UK but unlike Strutts has a significant international sales portfolio under its own name - has made the opposing choice, retaining Zoopla and ditching Rightmove.