| TheHouseShop | OnTheMarket | |
|---|---|---|
| Type: | Property portal | Property portal |
| Covers: | Sales, Lettings, New Homes, Accessible Housing, Flat Shares, International | Sales, Lettings, New Homes, Farms/Land, Student Accommodation |
| Caters to: | private sellers/landlords, online agents & High Street agents | High Street agents only |
| Fees: |
Free to advertise for everyone - both professional estate agents and private sellers/landlords |
Charged at cost to estate agents with 3 levels of membership: Gold, Silver, Bronze |
| Launched: | March 2015 | January 2015 |
| Website: | www.thehouseshop.com | www.onthemarket.com |
| No. of Listings: | 339,875 properties | undisclosed (est. 275,000) |
| Social Media: |
Twitter: 9150+ followers Facebook: 3670 likes |
Twitter: 9990+ followers Facebook: 4610 likes |
| Advertising Restrictions: | none | "One other portal" rule |
OnTheMarket is an online property portal covering the UK residential sales and lettings market, as well as the international property sales market. The portal launched in January 2015 and is exclusively for properties from High Street estate agents. The portal was created by a group of prominent High Street estate agents who were fed up with the duopoly that Rightmove and Zoopla held over the market, so they decided to band together and create their own rival portal to tackle the major players.
Buyers and tenants can use OnTheMarket to search for properties, both for sale and to rent, while estate agents can use the portal to advertise their clients' properties. Homeowners can also use the OnTheMarket website to find local estate agents in their area who can then be invited to conduct a free professional valuation of the property. Homeowners can also view information about each of the agents in their area, including what properties the agent is currently listing nearby and their contact details.
A property portal is a website that combines property adverts from a range of different sources and displays them all in one place, so that users can browse hundreds of thousands of properties in one place without having to visit different websites. A property portal is essentially an advertising platform that helps seller's and landlord's properties get more views and enquiries. The property portal does not own the properties on its website and if you want to view a property that you find on a portal, you will be directed to contact the agent or individual who is selling/letting the property - and not the portal themselves.
OnTheMarket lists homes for sale and to rent both in the UK and overseas. All of the properties on the OnTheMarket portal are represented by full-service, office based estate or letting agents, so you will not find any properties for sale or to rent from online estate agents or private individuals.
OnTheMarket showcases a selection of studios, flats, maisonettes, bungalows, semi-detached houses, detached houses and more available on their website. As well as general 'for sale' and 'to rent' listings, OnTheMarket also have sections for new homes, student accommodation, farms, estates and land.
OnTheMarket.com is a property portal exclusively for High Street estate agents and all the properties marketed on the website are listed by traditional, office-based estate agents. OnTheMarket do not work with online-only agents, private sellers or private landlords, so if you want to sell your home privately or let your property direct to tenants, you will not be able to advertise on OnTheMarket.com.
Selling property privately is much cheaper than selling through a traditional estate agent. All of the estate agents using OnTheMarket will charge their customers a commission fee based on a percentage of the property value - usually around 1.5%. This means that if you are selling a home worth £500,000, you would expect to pay roughly £7,500 in agency fees.
In comparison, you can advertise your property privately on a whole market portal like TheHouseShop.com free of charge and save thousands of pounds in the process.
OnTheMarket was created to take on the powerhouse portals of Rightmove and Zoopla. Rightmove and Zoopla dominate the UK market and estate agents pay significant amounts of money each month to advertise their clients properties on these two key marketing platforms. More and more people are starting their property searches online, and High Street estate agents have had to adapt their marketing techniques to make sure that their listings are seen by the millions of tenants and buyers who search online each month.
In an attempt to disrupt the duopoly of Rightmove and Zoopla, OnTheMarket created a service that is charged at cost to its estate agent members, making it a cheaper option for smaller agents who struggle to afford high portal fees. OnTheMarket has managed to take a significant amount of business away from its rival Zoopla by enforcing a "one-other-portal" rule which we will talk about in more detail later on in this piece.
Agents Mutual are the company behind the OnTheMarket portal and is run as a mutual business with no external shareholders. Agents Mutual was started by a group of established High Street estate agents in an attempt to gain more control over their advertising methods and lower the costs of online marketing by creating a "100% agent-owned and controlled" portal. Estate agents who join up with Agents Mutual get to have a say in the way that the OnTheMarket portal is run, and each member firm gets equal voting power regardless of size - meaning that even small agents with just a single office can shape the future of the portal.
According to Agents Mutual, they currently have the support of over 6,500 estate agent offices. Before the portal was launched in January 2015, Agents Mutual asked estate agents to register their interest in the portal and sign up to one of three levels of membership - Gold, Silver and Bronze.
Gold members would contribute funds for the development of the portal and in exchange would receive a 15% interest rate return on the amount they invest.
The founding members of Agents Mutual are as follows:
"Knight Frank is the leading independent, global real estate consultancy providing an integrated prime commercial and residential offering, operating in key hubs across the globe."
Twitter: @KnightFrank
Website: www.knightfrank.co.uk
"With a reputation for knowledge, integrity and forward-thinking, Douglas & Gordon has been providing professional property services in London since 1958"
Twitter: @Douglas_Gordon
Website: www.douglasandgordon.com
"Savills is a global real estate services provider listed on the London Stock Exchange with an international network of more than 700 offices and associates, offering a broad range of specialist advisory, management and transactional services to clients all over the world"
Twitter: @Savills
Website: www.savills.co.uk
"Strutt & Parker is the UK's largest independent property partnership, with a network of 55 offices throughout England and Scotland, providing innovative real estate solutions to its clients."
Twitter: @StruttandParker
Website: www.struttandparker.com
"Chestertons is the London and international residential property specialist who every year help thousands of clients and customers buy, sell, let, rent and manage their home and investments."
Twitter: @Chestertons
Website: www.chestertons.com
"Glentree Estates are the best known residential property agency in North West London and specialise in the luxury markets of Hampstead, Hampstead Garden Suburb, Kenwood and Highgate."
Twitter: @Glentree_estate
Website: www.glentree.co.uk
Individual sellers, landlords, tenants or buyers are not charged any fees to use the OnTheMarket portal, instead estate agents are charged a monthly fee to advertise their clients properties. Agents Mutual, the company behind OnTheMarket, promised to provide a portal service that was charged to estate agents at cost, unlike Rightmove and Zoopla who aim to make a profit from their advertising fees. Although OnTheMarket are providing a cheaper alternative to Rightmove and Zoopla, they now need to contend with the emerging free property portals, like TheHouseShop.com and Houser, who offer unlimited free listings to estate agents.
OnTheMarket originally planned to charge their member agents £400 per agency office for listings for the first 5 year period to help with the initial costs of repaying investments and to fund a brand awareness campaign, however they claim that fees will drop to £200 by 2020 when the initial debts have been paid off.
Consumers can use the OnTheMarket website to search hundreds of thousands of properties for sale and to rent from across the UK, including new homes, student accommodation and overseas property. Users can also search for local estate agents and request a professional property valuation. The website also holds data on sold prices for properties in the UK so users can browse house price data for properties in their area or research the housing market in areas they are considering moving to.
As well as their website, OnTheMarket have launched a handy app so that users can easily search for properties on their tablet or smart phone. The app is available from both GooglePlay and the App Store and you can see a screenshot of what you can expect from the property search app below.
Agents Mutual launched the OnTheMarket portal with the goal of becoming the UK's third portal and disrupting the strangehold of Rightmove and Zoopla as the leading dominant portals. There tactic to take on the major portals was to add a very clever clause to the OnTheMarket membership contract - the "one-other-portal" rule. The rule states that any estate agents who sign up with OnTheMarket can only advertise their properties on one other portal, effectively forcing all their members to drop either Rightmove or Zoopla.
The impact of the one-other-portal rule has meant that many agents re-evaluated their marketing techniques and it seems that Zoopla definitely lost many of its clients as a result. However, Agents Mutual have unintentionally strengthened the position of Rightmove as the UK's No. 1 portal.
Other players in the online property industry have not been very happy about the one-other-portal rule, and a complaint has been lodged with the Competition and Markets Authority regarding the "cartel-like" behavious of OnTheMarket in limiting their members marketing choices. Founder of online estate agent eMoov, Russel Quirk, lodged a complaint against Agents Mutual in late 2014 based on the grounds that it is an illegal cartel run by 10 estate agency directors to form a protective entity, and that it works to the detriment of the consumer due to its anti-competitive nature and limiting the potential exposure for a clients' property.
In April 2016 the Competition and Markets Authority sent an open letter to agents and property portals stating that the CMA had become "aware that some estate agents may be making joint decisions to join the OnTheMarket portal and to remove their business from competing portals, rather than reaching these decisions independently of eachother". The open letter warned that any agents who were found to be breaching competition law could be fined up to 10% of their annual turnover, have their directors disqualified for up to 15 years, and could even face up to 5 years jail time if they are prosectued under the criminal cartel offence.
It is important to state though that the CMA is taking no further action against OnTheMarket or Agents Mutual as of right now, and this open letter was more a general warning to the industry than a specific attack on the portal. The CMA say that they are working closely with the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), The Property Ombudsman (TPO) and the Property Redress Scheme (PRS) to raise awareness of the issue.
London estate agent Ns Suthakaran, manager of Karan Fossils estate agency, has written to Agents Mutual announcing his desire to quit the OnTheMarket portal due to fear of reprisals or penalties following the Competition and Markets Authority warning.
A spokesperson for OnTheMarket was quick to respond to the debacle and told industry blog Estate Agent Today: "We note this agent's decision to publish an open letter at this time. It is also of note that this agent's properties have not been displayed at OnTheMarket since December 2015, when it was evident that they were being advertised on more than one other portal. We do not believe it would be appropriate to comment further via the media on our contractual arrangements with this agent."
Chief Executive of OnTheMarket, Ian Springett wrote an article for CityAM laying out his response to the Competition and Markets Authority warning. In the article he states that "The CMA has been very clear in cautioning agents to act independently and not to collude. At OnTheMarket.com, we welcome that stance and have consistently given agents precisely the same advice to make any portal selection decisions independently".
He goes on to say that: "Success attracts its detractors. The letter from the CMA triggered some predictably opportunistic attacks on us from some who are perhaps sensitive to the impact we are having by injecting competition and increasing choice in a portals market dominated by two big listed companies, Rightmove and Zoopla Property Group."
