“Zoopla’s trading update underlines success of OnTheMarket”:

August 13, 2015

Ian Springett, Chief Executive of OnTheMarket.com, said: “Zoopla Property Group’s trading update only serves to underline the success and progress of OnTheMarket.com in continuing to disrupt the property portals market. Its tepid growth of 213 agent branches since its April 2015 update is a drop in the ocean in the context of its 23% loss of agents (which equates to 3,812 agents) between 30 September 2014 and 31 March 2015.

“The fact is that Zoopla Property Group has lost overall share of agents and traffic as OnTheMarket.com has become established and as the overwhelming majority of our members retain the dominant market leader as their other portal. Contrary to suggestions reportedly made today by Jefferies (joint sponsor of ZPG’s IPO last year), our one other portal rule remains in place.

“OnTheMarket.com was described six months ago by Alex Chesterman as a ‘short-term event’ but ZPG’s own trading update paints a very different picture.

“Support for OnTheMarket.com continues to increase daily and with such a strong desire for it to succeed from agents all across the UK – and a substantial growth in its traffic figures to more than 5.2million visits in July – we are confident not only that OnTheMarket.com is here to stay but that we can ultimately achieve our objective to develop a proper alternative to the market leader.

“It is hard to reconcile the property stock claims of Rightmove and Zoopla Property Group. Rightmove recently reported a 10 per cent increase in UK residential listings since the start of the year to 1.1million, claiming to display 50% more than any other portal. Yet Zoopla Property Group states today on its UK sales and rental search pages that it has 662,636 properties for sale and 215,652 properties for rent. This gives a total figure of 878,288. Moreover, searches conducted in the last 24 hours on the Zoopla portal show UK (England, Scotland and Wales) sales and lettings properties, including Sold Subject to Contract, Let and Shared Accommodation, total just 675,540.”

Christopher Walkey

Founder of Estate Agent Networking. Internationally invited speaker on how to build online target audiences using Social Media. Writes about UK property prices, housing, politics and affordable homes.

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