OnTheMarket "On The Rise", says CoStar Boss Andy Florance

An impressed Andy Florance has hailed "ten years of work" completed in ten months at OnTheMarket (OTM), the British challenger portal his company CoStar Group purchased for circa $120 million last year.

In a rare statement released on LinkedIn, Florance highlighted several significant milestones in OTM's progress since the takeover, praising President Jason Tebb for overseeing growth in traffic, supply and more compared to last year.

Highlights for OTM include:

• Web traffic is up 212% Year-on-Year
• Unique visitors up 348% YoY
• Sales leads up 76% YoY
• Total stock up 45% YoY
• Listing estate agents up 27% YoY

Other notable highlights included OTM "removing third-party ads from property results and details pages for a cleaner experience compared to our competitors", and launching "the UK's first desktop map-list default view by a major property portal".

According to Similarweb data shared on Florance's post, OTM grew its website traffic while Zoopla (-9% YoY) and Rightmove (-1% YoY) experienced slight dips in the same period.

Florance will undoubtedly be pleased by his ability to share some good PR for the probably-soon-to-be-rebranded-as-Homes.co.uk-OnTheMarket, but he will also be fully aware that rival CEO Johan Svanstrom will be untroubled by boosts to figures like traffic and leads at Rightmove head office.

Florance readily admitted this himself during an on-stage interview at the recent Proptech and Portal Watch conference in Barcelona, telling Online Marketplaces chairman Simon Baker that OTM (or a newly-rebranded Homes.co.uk) could stand to benefit from a serious investment in marketing to challenge Rightmove—a business Florance believes is "complacent" in its market leadership.