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As OnTheMarket finally goes live, investment analyst Jeffries International has said that, so far, Zoopla and Rightmove don't have much to fear from the new portal.

Jeffries studied the London listings statistics of all three portals, and the outlook for Zoopla.

Analysts searched for properties for sale and rent with two or more bedrooms across the 32 London boroughs. On The Market lists 5,397 properties for sale and 3,846 for rent; Zoopla 37,604 for sale and 39,134 for rent; and Rightmove 29,347 for sale and 22,513 for rent.

Rightmove limits search results to 1,000, so may have more properties that meet the search criteria, but chooses not to list them.

In our mind the much awaited launch of Agents' Mutual's OnTheMarket (OTM) has not lived up to the hype. We appreciate that more listings may follow in the days to come because despite having more than one year to prepare, some of OTM's customers were not ready for the big launch, said a research document from Jeffries.

The research found that OTM appears to have reasonable coverage in Camden with 1,663 properties (Zoopla has 4,190 and Rightmove more than 2000); Kensington and Chelsea with 1,892 properties (Zoopla has 7,108 and Rightmove more than 2,000); and Barnet with 1,303 properties (Zoopla has 4,390 and Rightmove more than 2,000). 53% of OTM's London listings are in these three boroughs compared to 20% of Zoopla's and 11% of Rightmove.

If London is the main battle ground, OTM is so far losing the war and has yet to win any battles, said Jeffries, We perceived London to be the main battle ground for Zoopla; ahead of the launch the writing on the wall was rather bleak with most of the OTM London-based founders dropping Zoopla rather than Rightmove. However so far Zoopla has only seen a loss of 5.5% of properties for sale in London and around 2.6% across the UK. It is early days but today is turning out much better than we had anticipated for Zoopla.

Jeffries concluded that it's too early to fully assess the likely impact of OTM but said so far OTM's bark appears to be worse than its bite.

Comments

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    Im sure EAT would report differently if On The Market advertised on their site.

    • 28 January 2015 11:25 AM
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    OTM has 48 hours exclusivity over the other chosen portal.....48 hours of marketing to a lesser audience is pointless. I am not anti OTM but just cannot see a business sense in it - if OTM becomes the success many hope it will then I will eat my words and probably sign up!! However I cannot justify loosing my clients 50% of the internet exposure at the moment. I also think that peoples hate directed towards Zoopla is misplaced - they are the cheaper portal and seem to direct more traffic to my properties. OTM has made a great start by having 4-5000 agents from day one but their massive challenge is now to justify to the stay away agents why they should join - this is going to take a massive swing in consumer trends and habits and I just dont see this happening in the short term.

    • 28 January 2015 10:08 AM
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    Forget listings its traffic that is the big issue here.
    Consumer mindshare is what wins the day.

    • 27 January 2015 23:05 PM
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    Hi Beej.
    Think how frustrating it is when you are actually looking for a property to rent and practically everything visible showing as AVAILABLE on some of the portals has been let or "withdrawn" etc. The general public are fed up with agents who cannot be bothered to update their listings online, offline or in their shop windows. The GP who are seeking properties to rent are also not particularly interested in seeing "tasters" to bolster agents stock position or properties that are showing "LET" or "LET BY" on websites, windows and boards! How long will it take before some agents realise that the Letting market is a "now" marketplace. At least RM show when properties were originally listed. Maybe the answer is for the portals to automatically remove listings after a period of time (or to check availability of each property listed on their system with the agent like Lonres have chosen to do).

    • 27 January 2015 18:35 PM
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    Mr Davies - I posted this on 'another' site yesterday:

    "...in my wee patch of the country the site has 58.2% of the RM total and 137.9% of Z's - yes - almost FORTY PERCENT MORE than the No#2 portal (mind you - the story at 9am was a little different... ;o) ) !"

    I admit to being more than a little surprised by that stat. I expected Z still to be No2 - it certainly was at 'open doors' - but when the 'one other portal rule' actually kicked in the numbers tumbled.

    • 27 January 2015 17:11 PM
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    I chose Bentham in North Yorkshire, a little English market town.

    • 27 January 2015 15:23 PM
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    And Which town did you choose Because I picked six different random locations yesterday, for rent and for sale, and they all came up with many more properties on Zoopla and Rightmove than OTM. That's not to knock OTM - it was their first day after launch - but to suggest that they're already competing is a little naive. It's too early to write them off, although plenty of knives are out already, but it's also way too early to herald them as a success story.

    • 27 January 2015 14:53 PM
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    Okay. It is day 2 of On The Market. I have chosen 1 English town at random and searched on the 3 sites and here are the results: Houses for sale: Zoopla 6 On The Market 39 Rightmove 116.

    • 27 January 2015 14:30 PM
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    Portal income is derived from agent subscription, not listings or visitors. Of course these are major factors mid to long term, but analysts should not underestimate the staying power of agents who have dumped Zoopla and are willing to take a hit on lead volumes for a time. Zoopla will have to win the 'battle' very quickly in order to keep revenues stable. If OTM agents can hold their nerve for 6-12 months, Zoopla's results are going to look pretty sketchy.
    Plus... Zoopla miraculously managed to draw uploads yesterday from agents who were no longer using them. I wonder if Jeffries will be re-running this analysis when the 'error' is rectified next week and the unsubscribed agents properties have been removed.

    • 27 January 2015 13:13 PM
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    I know of an independent agent in Fulham that is listing nearly 40 properties to let on Zoopla. The problem is that all these properties are let, and are not actually available to market. I have reported this to Zoopla, and they said they would do something about it...but did nothing in the end. Multiply this by a few more agents...and you get some rather inflated (dodgy) figure/stats on Zoopla. Not all seeing is believing.

    • 27 January 2015 10:33 AM
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    '....some of OTM's customers were not ready for the big launch, said a research document from Jeffries....'

    If this is true, what an indictment of the OTM agents who were not ready. How much more notice did they need My view has always been that ALL OTM agents had to be ready to hit the ground running. ALL of you get a grip or OTM will sink!

    • 27 January 2015 10:23 AM
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    Yep, silly to judge so soon after the launch. It needs to be given time to find its feet. And yes, the UK is made up of more than just London, so maybe comparing properties from further afield would have given more balance.

    I still have some big reservations about OTM, but writing it off one day after its launch is just plain silly.

    • 27 January 2015 09:40 AM
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    Jefferies would say that, they are the investment firm that advised Zoopla on their float, hardly an independent view, Zoopla are paying them to out out the research

    • 27 January 2015 09:29 AM
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    Another dumb article; most agents had to give 1 months notice at least to end Zoopla and allowed some overlap, surly you could figure that out! If agents push it over RM it will succeed. We now tell all customers to register with OTM because new houses will be on their 48hrs before RM. And by the way we had to delete our houses from Zoopla manually!

    • 27 January 2015 09:27 AM
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    Zoopla works for London, but what about the rest of country! Up step OTM.

    • 27 January 2015 09:13 AM
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    Perhaps someone could explain to Mr Jeffries that the country extends beyond the boundaries of the capital and unless I am much mistaken much of it lies north of Watford and west of Reading. Far too early to assess the impact of OTM.

    • 27 January 2015 08:16 AM
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    Type into Google 'properties to let battersea (or any area)' and see if OTM come up in a search. If they don't then how are the consumers going to find them, or most importantly, the agents properties

    They've got a huge task in their hands trying to compete with Z and RM. They're gonna need bundles of cash

    • 27 January 2015 08:13 AM
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    Zoopla and Jefferies could well find themselves in hot water when the truth finally comes out. Investors bought shares on the back of those figures yesterday and it is understood that Zoopla did not take off thousands of listings despite agents requests to do so.

    • 27 January 2015 06:37 AM
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