onthemarket out to lunch?

Running_Horse

OTM doesn't even list my local area, and can't be bothered with Zoopla.

As long as your property is on Rightmove it will be seen.

whalster

Zoopla is a classic case of reep what you sow .it had tried to squeeze out lots of property advertising channels .
All these portals RM On The Market or Zoopla are anti competitive in one way or another

A few simple questions you should ask yourself .

Zoopla says people only search the major two portals , if this is the case then why when they swallowed up Primelocation did they not close it down and merge it with the main site .

How exactly did we find property before the advent of portals ? Did we all never move ?

The third largest portal in the UK ? Answer Gumtree

Best overall search for property in the UK by place or postcode ? Google ,you get all property from all portals and many more from smaller sites this is because they configure their websites so each new listing creates a new page .

Bill23h

DRP wrote: »

RM >>> Zoopla for me.

A much more established website. In my experience, RMing to find a property online is almost as commonly used as 'Googling' is for a web search.

It seems to be regional. We're moving from Manchester to Yorkshire - Mcr is all RM, Yorks seems to be best represented on Zoopla. Seems local agents have a preference to one or the other?

tonytee

OnTheMarket have been accused of being anti-competitive and and running a cartel. Asking members to take their properties off either Rightmove or Zoopla isn't in the interest of the public. The whole thing has just made Rightmove even more competitive. Estate agents should expect another price membership increase in the coming months as Rightmove strengthens it's position as the number one portal.

Having said that Zoopla has a good presence in the London area with a very strong recent advertising campaign that was probably carried out to coincide with the launch of OTM. Zoopla recently conducted a 'street study' where the London public named Zoopla over Rightmove as the number 1 go to property portal - which I find hard to believe.

OTM is spending massively on Google Adwords - it's main advertising avenue. This route is very expensive and I expect their massive budget to run out very soon. Zoopla and particularly Rightmove rank organically in Google, so effectively pay much less for their online traffic.

90% of members (approx 4,000 branches) who signed up with OTM dropped Zoopla - so that just tells me that agents have a much better success with Rightmove - even in London.

OTM has been a mistake, the traffic is expesnive, poor quality and not targeted. When members realise that they aren't getting enough leads and their customers pressure them to get on Zoopla I think we will end up with agents joining all three portals. This will take a while as OTM isn't established, yet.

Surrey_EA

I think it is rather too early to judge whether OTM will be a success or not.

However, the entire basis for OTM being set up is that Rightmove, and to a lesser extent Zoopla, increase their charges to agents so frequently. Rightmove really have no other option, they're hardly able to sign up any more agents, as there are so few that do not already list with them, so the only way they can increase revenues for their shareholders each year is to increase the price for their existing customers. Price increases of 20%pa, each year, were expected from Rightmove.

I think it came as quite a shock to OTM that the exodus from Zoopla was so great, and so many agents felt they were unable to leave Rightmove. Whilst this has inevitably weakened Zoopla, Rightmove has come out so far as even stronger, which was not exactly the intention.

nidO

Surrey_EA wrote: »

I think it came as quite a shock to OTM that the exodus from Zoopla was so great, and so many agents felt they were unable to leave Rightmove. Whilst this has inevitably weakened Zoopla, Rightmove has come out so far as even stronger, which was not exactly the intention.

Kind of demonstrates the brains needed across the majority of the EA business really, anyone with 2 braincells vaguely in the vicinity to bash together could have told them that introducing a 3rd portal which allows you to only list with 1 other just means the smaller of the 2 existing portals is gonna sink, leaving the dominant one just as dominant (because ultimately as an EA you still have to get your houses seen and sold, which means keeping them where they're seen), when the whole supposed idea of OTM was to dislodge Rightmove.

Surrey_EA

You may have a point there! However, I think there was a belief that in some areas Zoopla was stronger and in others Rightmove was stronger, therefore a more equal split was predicted. Instead it has highlighted just how dominant a position Rightmove occupies.

The whole idea of OTM was to dislodge Rightmove and Zoopla.