March 19th, 2015.
New Property Portal OnTheMarket Uncovered
If you’re looking to sell or buy a house, which website should you use? Rightmove and Zoopla are probably the first that spring to mind however a new website founded by Agents’ Mutual, onthemarket.com, has launched and is challenging the two leading property websites. So what is OnTheMarket? Read on to find out:
How Does OnTheMarket Work?
The website aims to provide potential buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants with an outstanding property search service that excludes third party adverts, spam email and irrelevant information. What does this mean? The website will be easier for users to search for properties and find the perfect home within their price range across the UK.
Game Face On
OnTheMarket sure know how to take on a challenge. Those who want to list on a property website have to decide whether they want to appear on OnTheMarket and either Rightmove or Zoopla; they can’t have the best of both worlds. This means that agents are forced to choose between Rightmove and Zoopla, therefore in most cases, properties are being removed from one of the two sites.
Whilst this may seem sneaky, between them, Zoopla and Rightmove get 100 million hits a month so OnTheMarket need to have some sort of motive in order to succeed in the industry.
OnTheMarket has also stated that those properties on its site need to wait 48 hours before listing properties on other sites. Not only do estate agents have limitation on member listings, online estate agents are ‘banned’ from joining OnTheMarket if they don’t provide a full service or operate from an office. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
However that hasn’t stopped agents from signing up; so far 2,200 firms have joined OnTheMarket and it could, possibly, have something to do with the fact that both Rightmove and Zoopla are said to be on the rise when it comes to fees, whereas with OnTheMarket, agents are able to pay a fixed monthly price for listing properties for five years.
Tough Challenge
OnTheMarket aren’t competing with amateurs. Rightmove and Zoopla are both dominant websites in the industry and are extremely profitable. Rightmove make yearly profits of £104m on a turnover of £140m, and Zoopla make annual profits of £39m on a turnover of £80m. So how does OnTheMarket compete with this? Lower fees.
The new property listings website said its typical fees for a selling agent could range from £177 a month to £655 a month. These figures depend on location, with central London being at the higher end of the cost bracket.
In comparison, Rightmove said its standard fees were £730 a month for a sales agency branch, and £395 for a lettings agency branch. Zoopla said its average fee per agent was £323.
So which website will you be using to sell or buy a property? And what do you think of the new property portal? Be sure to tweet us @PureCommFinance.