On The Market Launches – Should Rightmove and Zoopla be worried?

  • On The Market Launches – Should Rightmove and Zoopla be worried?

    Agents’ Mutual has launched its new property portal on the 26th January, and its aim is to stir up the market.

    On The Market is a portal created by Agents Mutual, a group of estate agents who have become frustrated with the constantly rising fees from the big two – Rightmove and Zoopla. The founding agents include big names such as Savills, Strutt & Parker and Knight Frank, so they’re guaranteed to have plenty of listings.

    It’s a tough market to crack, with Rightmove getting 90,000,000 monthly visitors, and Zoopla 42,750,000. On The Market are confident though - they’ve got a few tricks up their sleeves.

    Agents who feature their properties on On The Market will only be allowed to advertise on one other portal. In practice this means choosing between Rightmove and Zoopla. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule – Citylets, a Scottish lettings specialist and StudentCrowd, who specialise in student property.

    Potentially, if buyers want to see all the properties for sale, they’ll know it’s not enough to just check one portal – and Agents Mutual hope the other one they’ll check is On The Market.

    Agents Mutual has also made the decision to only allow traditional estate agents and not their online only counterparts. This decision has unsurprisingly been slammed by online only agents who provide a much lower cost alternative to traditional agents – eMoov claimed it was “no more than a hissy fit by the estate agency establishment.” Ian Springett who is running the venture countered that online-only agents are “parasitic” saying “this is a bet on high street estate agents.”

    On The Market are also suggesting that agents withhold their properties from their other portal until it’s been marketed by them. They’re hoping that buyers will realise that if they want to be first to see what’s for sale they’ll go straight to On The Market.

    No-one can say for certain exactly what the future might hold for On The Market, but a shake up to the system seems inevitable.

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