‘OnTheMarket.com supplies Chestertons with high-quality leads and volume is increasing,’ says agency CEO
Robert Bartlett, CEO of Chestertons and a Non-Executive Director of Agents’ Mutual, comments on OnTheMarket.com as the portal marks its first birthday:
At Chestertons, we are proud to have been instrumental in the development, launch and direction of OnTheMarket.com and we have every confidence in its future. After just one year, it has significantly disrupted the portals market and is already standing tall as one of the major portals. The lightning-quick website has impressed our clients and applicants, many of whom have told us that they find the ad-free search process very user-friendly and that they appreciate the clear, high quality presentation of the properties. This no-nonsense approach has struck a chord with a large number of consumers, not least because many of the new properties displayed at OnTheMarket.com are advertised exclusively there first, often 24 to 48 hours before they can be seen on any other portal. There is a lot of scaremongering around OnTheMarket.com but the reality is that it provides our 34 London offices with high quality leads and that the volume of these leads has been increasing. However, we know that this is still only the beginning. Ultimately, we hope OnTheMarket.com will build itself into a market-leading position where Chestertons needs no other portal at all.
As full-service estate and letting agents, we have long faced the challenge as to how to regain control of our property data from Rightmove and Zoopla Property Group and to deliver a better service to our clients and to property-searchers. The creation of Agents’ Mutual as an agent-owned, agent-controlled business has at last disrupted the property portals market and presented agents with a portal which will work for them without the need to secure large profits for shareholders. We believe that it is only a matter of time before increasing numbers of agents realise that OnTheMarket.com provides the very real possibility to regain control of their data now and that as it continues to build on its membership and property stock, OnTheMarket.com will prove unstoppable.