OnTheMarket continues attack on Rightmove with recent agent-bound email

Property search portal giant, OnTheMarket (OTM), who has been in an ongoing feud with competitor Rightmove, has recently upped its attack. OTM has sent out a strongly-worded email to agents detailing how the number of leads generated by Rightmove has dropped thanks to OTM's efforts.

It also says that OnTheMarket’s fees are, on average, about 25 percent of those of Rightmove, while OTM’s New & Exclusive feature allows agents to “reduce your reliance on other portals.”

Separately, City investment consultancy Zeus - which advises OnTheMarket - says the portal is expecting to have 17,200 agent branches listing in three years’ time.

Projections suggest that if OTM can convert those agents who joined at a discount in the past two years into market-level fee-paying customers it will earn £388 a month on average from each agent by 2021.

This would add up to £64m revenue and profit after tax of £27.4m for the challenger portal.

Here’s the email attack on Rightmove:

Last Friday’s reporting of 2018 results shows another year in which Rightmove has generated increases in revenue, profits and profit margin primarily by hiking its Average Revenue per Advertiser by a further £83 to break through the £1,000 per month barrier for the first time.

The majority of Rightmove’s revenue – over 75% – comes from the fees which agents pay.

It has again – for the third year in a row – generated fewer leads for its property advertiser customers, down from 210 leads per advertiser per month in 2015 to 171 leads per advertiser per month in 2018 – a fall of 19%.*

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