OnTheMarket now has 57% of branches but warns again o...

OnTheMarket has seen another increase in listings to more than 10,500 offices, but it is repeating a warning that its free listings deal will eventually change to “full tariff contracts.”

The portal says the new branch total, as of Wednesday this week, represents a 91 per cent increase since it listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market on February 9.

The company says it now has listing agreements with some 57 per cent of the country’s agency branches.

“As our property stock continues to rise and traffic increases in response to our recent marketing push, we are receiving positive feedback from more and more agents across the country about the level of good quality leads we provide” says chief executive officer Ian Springett in a statement this morning.

“Many agents are relatively small, family-run, independent businesses, which want to see greater value for money from portals, as well as a real choice for consumers when it comes to searching for property” he adds.

Springett says that as an agent-backed business, OnTheMarket’s strategy offers “fair, sustainable pricing and the ability to invest in, and benefit from, the success of their portal.”

His statement admits that the growth in OnTheMarket's agency branch base to date has been predominantly from offering free listings under short term introductory trial offers and - as he warned in a statement earlier this summer - says the portal has “a view to converting these to full tariff contracts when the value of its offering has been demonstrated.”

He says the OTM sales 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.”