You may have heard the rumble of activity amidst the online property portals open to Estate Agents recently and we wanted to give you our summary of the situation and how it will affect our clients and marketing plans.
Last Monday saw the arrival of a new online portal called OntheMarket.com
This po
rtal does a very similar job to the existing market leaders Rightmove and Zoopla with one very large difference – this portal is owned and operated by a consortium of Estate Agents. Emerging quite simply because Agents were tired of the duopoly of the big players causing mounting fees and very little in return. The fees were increasing, functionality was not improving and Agents felt duped that they were losing control of their marketing choices.
For this reason the concept behind OntheMarket.com was excellent. An advertising and marketing choice created by Agents, for Agents with hugely reduced fees in comparison to the existing portals & potentially providing much needed competition to the market with the hope it would reduce the stronghold of Rightmove and Zoopla.
All admirable goals and we support the concept wholeheartedly. Trend & Thomas not being shy of a little competition to the market…with 6 Estate Agents in the High Street it’s not a game for the faint-hearted! However, in order to shake things up, OnTheMarket.com had one very serious condition – in order to join, benefit from hugely reduced fees and gain shares in the burgeoning company – you had to drop one of the other main portals – Rightmove or Zoopla.
The arrival of OnTheMarket.com has been a long term process and we have been watching the development of the portal over the past 12 months along with the reactions of Rightmove and Zoopla, other Agents, the press and most importantly, the public.
OnTheMarket.com launched last Monday and we have watched the week with interest.
Our findings after week one:
Not enough budget to provide TV Advertising to match the competition- Not enough budget to ensure market leading functionality
- Not enough diversity of properties listed to make it the go to portal for buyers, tenants.
So after a year of research and debate Trend & Thomas would like to announce our 2015 advertising and marketing decision – we will be staying with Rightmove & Zoopla.
Despite the great shake up OnTheMarket.com can give the industry and the attractive reduction in fees, we have come to the decision that the best interests of our clients are foremost and the giants of Rightmove and Zoopla have much bigger budgets, better current functionality, more exposure to the public and more back end support to fix issues and develop future technology.
While we herald the success of OnTheMarket.com we don’t feel it will currently give our clients & their properties the best advertising and marketing exposure. For the time being it will actually reduce the number of people being exposed to their property. From our research in this first week of OnTheMarket.com there is over 80% more online activity via Rightmove alone in our local area, than there is via OnTheMarket.com
We will continue to monitor developments and report any updates and news to you, but for now we are staying with the market leaders for the sole benefit of our clients.
OnTheMarket is not currently InOurMarket – but you can help us with our research by answering our poll:
Trend & Thomas Estate Agents 