What is OnTheMarket.com?
OnTheMarket.com is a British property search portal that launched in January 2015. It covers the residential property market (sales and lettings) throughout the United Kingdom. It is the third biggest property portal provider in terms of traffic and competes with Rightmove and Zoopla.
However what really differentiates it from RightMove and Zoopla is that it’s an agent-backed property portal, aiming to charge sustainable fair prices to agents.
How does OnTheMarket compare to RightMove and Zoopla?
Although RightMove and Zoopla are the clear #1 and #2, OnTheMarket impressively reaches 57% of the traffic that Zoopla has. For a more comprehensive view on the leading property portals in the United Kingdom, click here to see the dedicated article. Indeed you will see number of visitors per month of each of the top real estate websites in Britain.
Revenues of OnTheMarket.com
OnTheMarket’s revenues are now over £ 337,000 per month. Here are the KPIs:
- 1,000 branches
- £337 average revenue per branch
- For comparison: RightMove’s average revenue per branch is £1,007
“A total of almost 1,000 branches have been signed under paying contracts since conversion commenced, with an average ARPA [revenue from each branch] of £337 per month. Of these new contracts, 57 percent are long-term commitments of three or five years with shares and the majority of the balance are on one year contracts with an option to convert to a longer-term contract with shares.”
Official statement, June 2019
Issuing shares to real estate agencies: a clever strategy?
Real estate agencies are becoming share-holders of property portals that they create, not just in the UK but also in France (BienIci), in Switzerland (Immobilier.ch) just to name a few.
Whilst OnTheMarket represents over 57% of the traffic of the #2, Zoopla, BienIci is also doing pretty well with now… 57% of the market’s #2, SeLoger.com.
When was BienIci created? In 2015 too… So after 3 to 4 years of existence, both portals have made it to a big share of the traffic that the leading portals get. Impressive. Therefore we can say that creating an industry backed portal may, in some cases, prove to be very successful in terms of traffic.
However, how many millions have the real estate brands injected to make it so powerful? We can hardly judge on the profitability in the short-term of such efforts, but on the long-term we can at least say that such efforts reduce considerably the dependance on the leading property portals.
Does OnTheMarket have an Overseas section?
OnTheMarket has an Overseas section just like its competitors, which includes an airbnb like search. Although at the beginning this section was exclusive to brands such as Chestertons and Savills (shareholders of OnTheMarket), it is now progressively opening to more brands from Spain, Portugal, or France among other countries.
What can you do now?
Contact me if you want to sell more properties to British buyers! I will help define a strong international marketing strategy.
Alternatively, read more articles on leading property portals by clicking here.