OnTheMarket now has 7,500 agency offices signed up, it has told the stock exchange.
That figure was the original – but unachieved – aim of OTM, which said it would be the ‘tipping point’ in its battle against Zoopla. However that was when OTM was still operating its ‘one other portal’ rule, which it dropped when it floated on AIM in February, with some 5,500 offices.
Yesterday, the statement to the stock market said: “The offering of predominantly free or discounted introductory rates is a key element of the Company’s growth strategy, which aims to increase the core agent customer base, the number of their property listings on the portal and the traffic the portal attracts.
“To support this growth strategy, the company is also pleased to announce that since Admission it has doubled its field sales team from 15 to 32 people.”
OTM also announced that last month, traffic to the site hit 13.7m visits, up from 5.5m in April last year.
CEO Ian Springett said: “We are extremely pleased to be continuing to exceed our own expectations and to have reached this latest milestone.
“As we sustain this pace we are strongly encouraged by the growing agent support and feedback to our proposition to create an agent-backed, full scale challenger portal that disrupts the existing duopoly.”
Yesterday, OTM’s share rose 6.5% to end the day at 147p.
Comments (64)
A special message for eastsidedonkey, just so it’s crystal clear to you – which bit of Put Up or Shut Up do you not understand. Take the bet and get your £29,000 on the table.
Either have the courage to back your bet that I am not a Day 1 Locked-in Gold Member or shuffle off and gaze up your OTM Portal.
Read contracts? That worthless piece of ? that I signed on Day 1, that was magically binned in a swirl of smoke and mirrors by IS & Co. The only honourable one is this debacle is myself and the other Locked-in Members who have honoured their original contracts.
Quite simply OTM have demonstrated that they will ? upon their members with V1, so when I don’t reach the dizzying heights of ****** that you and other Pro OTM’ers do, forgive me, once ? on, twice shy.
I have spent decades conducting myself honourably in this industry and forgive me when I take exception to a service provider or anyone for that matter trying or indeed shafting me. We all sucked the Rightmove Sweeties and only have ourselves to blame. The fact that OTM have lacked integrity & honesty in their dealings with members only reinforces the cast iron plated opinion of utter distrust in dealing with a company which has demonstrated on a number of occasions and levels how they fail to conduct themselves with integrity and in an honest manner.
Let’s take “Double the Salesforce” as a lighthearted look on the word play in action. Dear OTM, please confirm what your workforce has doubled from. A simple question that only requires a simple answer.
Imagine I tell you that I have doubled my income! Sounds impressive! What if my income was doubled from £1 to £2?
For now I have wasted several minutes of my life typing this so forgive me further, I’m bored with lies & statistics talk, I’m tired of the lick em’/suck em’ posts which particularly echo the Zoopla sales force in past times.
If you and other donkeys in your pack can’t recognise how anyone can be manipulated by press statements/stats/eyecatching one-liners and the gradual rolling out of pro this/that comments then you are sleeping whilst walking about your daily life.
My View is taken from my experience as an real paying OTM Member so forget spinning your ? to me. You have no contribution to make to my real experience of OTM as you haven’t been through what I have been through. However you simply can’t admit that, no doubt for a number of reasons, which quite frankly I haven’t the further energy or time to waste going into on here.
It’s time I got rested up as I have a very busy day tomorrow, listing and selling houses, amongst my many other Estate Agency tasks, and trust me, OTM never has and isn’t currently contributing to our success, yet I pay £300 for this debacle and will do until next year. Do you know what though, tomorrow I’m going to look at the poisonous contract which I signed with OTM V1 and refresh my scarred memory re the actual date I escape from this nightmare!!!!!!!!!!! ……and if it is late 2019 then make sure you and no other Pro OTM Poster comes within a Million Miles of me.
Jeez…You’ve completely lost it Mr Orwell!!
They firmly remain CON TheMarket to me.
Before any posters bother to engage with me, do your homework and search through all my OTM related PIE posts, then you actually know exactly what my position was and is now.
There is little point engaging with half-hearted Pro OTM Posters (either too lazy or ill informed, or simply waffling) who have failed to appraise themselves of OTM from Day 1.
The Bandwagon Fanboys licking the proverbial contribute little of substance when they have failed to understand the whole of the OTM Debacle Story.
As another poster states so clearly “Doff your hat to me as well as I too subsidise you whilst forced to continue locked-in as a Day One Gold Member of the defunct yet still able to suck membership money OTM V2”.
Where on earth do people like smile please get the idea that some walked away rich. It’s incredibly irritating when people like you peddle this utter drivel. Springett gets nothing bar his salary until the five years is up. No director firms get any special treatment. If you have proof of what you allege please show it, otherwise stop pontificating.
Sprignett got millions just in shares!
What, that he can go out and spend now? He won’t be able to spend for five years and if he does the job (which he seems to be doing pretty well from where I’m standing) what is he worth – have a stab at telling us?
He is allowed to sell as many as he likes from day one. Did you not read the T&C’s that came out? – It is still on the EYE archive. Feel free to look it up.
What are his shares worth? From memory, if it was the insane valuation at launch of £5 per share he gave it was 25 million £’s
Given the current share price i think my crude maths make it 7/8 million £’s – Not bad for shafting around 5000 agents and 3 years work.
‘Fraid you’re talking ******** mate. No he can’t – ask him.
How odd there seems to be new posters regarding OTM and a lot more banging the drum for them now they are a listed company and not owned by agents for agents.
Where have all these vocal supporters been for the last 4 years? – The sceptic in me things just maybe they are employed by OTM in one way or another.
I am certainly not a new poster and certainly do not work for OTM and why are you so opposed to it ?
The sceptic in me wonders why you would not support an industry owned portal ?
If more Agents thought like you, then we deserve to be paying massively increased premiums each year to pay for shareholder returns.
At least if OTM is successful with good shareholders returns – then as a long term supporter with a share of this company, then I can only benefit.
It is only those industry decision makers that have not supported OTM that need to think long and hard of their long terms strategy as this was never about short term gains !
Not neccessarily you SJEA. A lot of likes and new names popping up.
I am all for an industry owned portal but OTM is not that.
smile please
Can you explain why you feel OTM is not for you ? Do you feel that improvements can be made (being positive) or do you feel that you have been mislead in some way or is OTM not generating enough for you ?
My own experience is that over the last few months – maybe with the input of some more funds – OTM are generating enough leads, and certainly more than RM to make me feel they are value for money, and yes I am paying the full cost as I have from the start of OTM. Don’t get me wrong, some months this has not been the case, but as each month passes, more and more leads are coming in daily – is this not what we all really want ?
Smile please has spelt it out perfectly….
He thinks its ok to make money on the back of original gold member agents by being a “johnny come lately” that only pays £50 per month but he thinks its unfair for Ian Springett to be a “jonny come lately” for making money out of making OTM a success!
If your referrng to me smile please, I’ll have you know that I’ve been posting on this site for as long as You….just with a different user name!
So many of us know that you were not an original OTM member.
You are correct, i am not a gold member, i am a johnny come lately.
I pay 50 quid a month, that is what it is worth. If it stays that price i will advertise indefinatly. But it will not stay at that price it will increase, increase and increase. Soon as they put the price up im gone.
To be honest i dont know why i am posting as all i am trying to do is educate simple minded estate agents that are trusting OTM.
They have shown they are not trustworthy time and again.
If the industry (and Joe Public) would accept that you do not NEED 3 portals – then we can get some control over fees (as it would be a case of perming any 2 from 3).
Zoopla/OTM have a real opportunity here if they promote a similar message.
You refer to us as ‘simple minded’ and you are unhappy with a monthly cost of £50. I am not sure how your other advertising spend goes, but what can you buy for £50pm ?
how many people does it take to give away free advertising?
Double the sales team means double NO INCOME !!
Don’t get me wrong I am fed up with rightmove costing too much but I think OTM should charge a fair fee and spend hugely on marketing to then dominate their market.
Nice to see lots of new OTM employees have signed up to comment on PIE this week….
Bang on.
Possibly, although more likely, like me, very satisfied users happy to get involved in levelling the playing field.
After receiving my recent price increase from RM, up nearly 39% in one year, with slightly fewer leads driven to us (with an increase in stock), I have taken the decision to drop RM.
I have over the last few weeks received between 3-6 times as many leads from OTM than RM. I realise that this is a short period to analyse but I cannot justify the poor value that RM is currently offering. As I am still tied to the one other portal rule(original gold member), I will shortly be rejoining Zoopla as they certainly cannot be doing worse than RM at the moment and should prove to be driving greater numbers to us at a much lesser cost.
As an agent, we all feel that we must be on RM – I am hoping to prove otherwise, as I often think it is our responsibility to promote the portals of choice and not be driven by the long established RM. The savings alone will allow me to think outside the box and generate more leads to us.
For all those who think OTM is a waste of time and effort – why not give it a go, particularly as it’s free – if you don’t what sort of mad business person are you ?
If you could go back in time and stop RM becoming the monster it is, would you?
Given you have just said you have dropped RM i believe you would.
OTM, Z, RM are all the same. All you are doing is dropping one for another. Lets say OTM get critical mass and we all drop RM. What do you think OTM are going to do?
They will increse fees, What are you going to do then? Drop OTM in favour of the cheapest portal for the next 18 months and then drop again and change?
Before you ask i do not have the answer, but its sure as heck not OTM!
I will take that smile please
I mentioned that I am re-joining Zoopla.
As the owner of a small business, it is important that I receive value for money. What I mean is that RM are no longer value for money, if they were, I would happily continue to pay.
I recently calculated that they are costing around £30 PER enquiry, and 2/3rds of these enquiries were simply not progressing to a viewing, simply asking for information that is already inside the details already advertised.
Competition is needed in any industry to ensure that customers get a fair deal. RM clearly do not think there is real competition our there as they have just given us a ridiculous rate increase.
By replacing RM with Zoopla, I will be saving around £1,000 per branch. I would expect that they will be generating at least the same number of enquiries as RM. With the savings monthly, I can then look to spend this on more effective marketing for my clients elsewhere.
OTM is, in my opinion, the last chance saloon for Estate Agents and I have believed this from the start. With the OOPR now dropped, which many naysayers wanted, now is the time to support a portal that is majority owned by the agents !
I will happily update all with my future findings, as few agents do not appear to have the nerve to drop RM !
To the shiney new Pro OTM Posters on here. Sorry, where were you 1st time around?!
To OTM. You’re giving your portal away free to New joiners and you’re announcing that you’ve only managed to give it away free to 1000 plus New joiners?
To those New joiners, make sure you doff your hat to myself and other locked-in original V1 OTM Members who are desperate to leave and are prevented from doing so until early next year. I and those locked-in others are subsidising your Free arrival deal/s as we pay circa £300 every month for OTM V2 which we DO NOT WANT TO BE PART OF!
OTM will always be remembered as CONTheMarket to myself and others as we were sold down the river with hollow talk & empty promises!
You too are a shiny new poster, certainly under that user name.
Although I do believe that youve just given yourself away….if you were a true OTM original member then you would know that your contract runs out at the end of 2019 and not the start of 2019 as youve just stated!!
Zoopla/RM rep perhaps?!
eastsidedonkey?
I have just under £29,000 in my Building Society right now.
You put the same amount up and I’ll take your bet to prove that I am a Day 1 locked-in GOLD Member OTMV1 Member. I prove that, YOU FORFEIT YOUR MONEY.
Roz can referee and I’ll donate half my winnings from you to Roz and she can donate to a charity of her choice.
Don’t make assumptions, Don’t sling stones, unless you are prepared to PUT UP or SHUT UP.
If you are an agent then you need to get better at reading contracts….
If your a gold member then your contract expires end of 2019 not the start of 2019, but hey what’s 12 months amongst friends!!
eastsidedonkey – which bit of Put Up or Shut Up do you not understand. Take the bet and get your £29,000 on the table.
Either have the courage to back your bet that I am not a Day 1 Locked-in Gold Member or shuffle off and gaze up your OTM Portal.
Read contracts? That worthless piece of ? that I signed on Day 1, that was magically binned in a swirl of smoke and mirrors by IS & Co. The only honourable one is this debacle is myself and the other Locked-in Members who have honoured their original contracts.
Quite simply OTM have demonstrated that they will ? upon their members with V1, so when I don’t reach the dizzying heights of ****** that you and other Pro OTM Lickers do, forgive me, once ? on, twice shy.
I have spent decades conducting myself honourably in this industry and forgive me when I take exception to a service provider or anyone for that matter trying or indeed shafting me. We all sucked the Rightmove Sweeties and only have ourselves to blame. The fact that OTM have lacked integrity & honesty in their dealings with members only reinforces the cast iron plated opinion of utter distrust in dealing with a company which has demonstrated on a number of occasions and levels how they fail to conduct themselves with integrity and in an honest manner.
Let’s take “Double the Salesforce” as a lighthearted look on the word play in action. Dear OTM, please confirm what your workforce has doubled from. A simple question that only requires a simple answer.
Imagine I tell you that I have doubled my income! Sounds impressive! What if my income was doubled from £1 to £2?
For now I have wasted several minutes of my life typing this so forgive me further, I’m bored with lies & statistics talk, I’m tired of the lick em’/suck em’ posts which particularly echo the Zoopla sales force in past times.
If you and other donkeys in your pack can’t recognise how anyone can be manipulated by press statements/stats/eyecatching one-liners and the gradual rolling out of pro this/that comments then you are sleeping whilst walking about your daily life.
My View is taken from actual experience as an actual paying OTM Member so forget spinning your ? to me. You have no contribution to make to my actual experience of OTM as you haven’t been through what I have been through. However you simply can’t admit that, no doubt for a number of reasons, which quite frankly I haven’t the further energy or time to waste going into on here.
it’s time I got rested up as I have a very busy day tomorrow, listing and selling houses, amongst my many other Estate Agency tasks, and trust me, OTM never has and isn’t currently contributing to our success, yet I pay £300 for this debacle and will do until next year. Do you know what though, tomorrow I’m going to look at the poisonous contract which I signed with OTM V1 and refresh my scarred memory re the actual date I escape from this nightmare!!!!!!!!!!! ……and if it is late 2019 then make sure you and no other Pro OTM Poster comes within a Million Miles of me.
Heads gone!!
Is that a clue, Eastsidestory90…
…or has my head gone too?
If you are a real agent, why would you be so anti-OTM – a portal for the industry, greatly owned by it’s supporters ?
Donkey No 2, read above.
So tell us how just how bad it is…. just how few/many shares did gold and silver members receive…… or shut up.
Donkey No 3, read above then read thru all the OTM threads from Day 1 of this debacle.
When you have done that then we can have an intelligent conversation – I’ll provide the intelligent part.
Any agent that wants OTM to succeed has obviously not kept up to date with what they have been doing over the last 4 years.
It’s a scam. They have no interest in helping agents.
Zzzz
Its all well and good OTM having all these extra offices signed up, but most of them aren’t paying a penny for a 6 or 12 month run. How many of them at the end of this period will just knock it on the head
I don’t understand the animosity towards OTM. Is it not a portal that has been set up for estate agents?
Offering a years free trial is a no brainer. We will fully be behind it. I hope that their advertising really works and that through estate agents and good advertising, it will push vendors towards the site.
As we all know, vendors will go where the stock is. If it all can be on OTM then brilliant. RM will have to do something about their ludicrous fees. Every pound spent with RM. 76p goes to RM. Are we happy to continue to feed this cash cow? I know I’m not!
My leads are down with RM over the last 12 months. Yet my core rate goes up over £300???
i ditched Zoopla last year. I’m still receiving calls to take them back. Currently being offered £200 a month for 6 months. Shows how much they undervalue their product. I was paying £550 per month before.
For me , OTM should be backed. Look at the alternative. OTM goes in 12-18 months. RM will be laughing. Our fees will hit the £2500 per month as they have stated to the city. We will have no one else to blame, but ourselves.
Back it, or just bend over and pull your pants down to RM and brace yourselves.
The problem question is…..if the 12 months with OTM goes amazingly, and you get hundreds and hundreds of enquiries, valuation requests etc, and are selling houses by the bucket load…..will you be prepared to come off rightmove if all your competitors remain on rightmove?
Yes. I will be coming off RM in approx 12-18 months.
Last month we received more contact / enquiries from OTM than RM….FACT. (we don’t belong to the joke Zoopla)
I second this; since going on OTM I have received more leads from them than Rightmove and Zoopla combined. *
*Screen shots available.
@Arthur…..you actually think that is a “problem question?”
Why would anyone continue to pay RM silly money each month when they don’ need to?
I think its a huge problem question. How many of us start advertising on Rightmove because we thought it was a the future a great way to sell homes? Or was it because our competitors were on RM and peer pressure plus being hammered about it on vals brought us on?
If you truly believe you dont need Rightmove, leave now, why wait.If you run an active mailing list you should be selling properties via this method anyway. If you really believe this, why do companies advertise on Zoopla at all, or why not just Zoopla.
The question is do people have the balls to leave Rightmove when there has to be a fear that it will effect instruction levels, the outcome if you commit to OTM, is that you will end up with 3 portals to pay,
In a word – yes. Firstly we have to remove Hoopla then move on to Wrongmove.
But if you truly believe this, why do you advertise on Zoopla in the first place? If you want to make a stand why not drop Rightmove first, why not do it tomorrow?
OTM also want to charge you £2500 per month.
They are not owned by agents they are listed company.
OTM was suppose to be owned by the agents but Ian Sprignett decided to but zero effort into making it work. This was his plan all along.
To then get the poor agents who were 2.5 years into a 5 year contract paying circa 500 per month he promised them shares if they resigned and agreed to list.
They shares he said would be worth £5 at launch they were in fact just £1.40 They were never going to be £5!
He also stopped agents from selling more than 10% in the first year. But he and the other directors can sell as many as they like.
It’s the biggest scan in years and he has walked away from it rich. Agents have and will continue to suffer.
Sorry Smile Please but you are wrong, wrong and wrong.
Where am i wrong?
I’d be interested in your answer to this also, NewsBoy…
CMagent58,
I have just mirrored your comments ! I have decided to return to Zoopla and ditch RM ! Reduced leads from RM and greatly increased costs = poor value.
Hi, SJEA
I seem to remember that you’re a fellow ‘oop North’ Agent.
We may well have sat in the same room on more than one occasion.
Would you please explain to me if you will why you “have decided to return to Zoopla” – after all the brown and sticky that’s flowed down that particular watercourse over the last three years?
PeeBee,
Firstly, I have never has an issue with Zoopla, always good service. The leads were many but of a poor quality.
Secondly, the deal just offered by Zoopla is certainly worth taking – nearly 1/10th of the cost of RM. I have agreed to give them a go, as I do feel it is still going to take a little longer for OTM to provide sufficient traffic to drive a constant stream of leads.
Confused dot com.
If you never had an issue with Zoopla – then why did you (assumedly) drop them like a sticky mess when it came to OTMs OOP rule?
OTM is the only life line left currently if agents don’t want to be shafted by Rightmove and Zoopla tiered pricing structure.
My advice is support it, to bring in check and balances. Then influence it.
Agents hold the cards, let’s unite for once.
Absolutely- and when you join you MUST use “early bird”
it’s a massive tool against rightmove and buyers love it!
OTM weakness is the fact that the other 2 have real time listing, so the alerts are picked up by others and by the time OTM alert arrives…too late. Early bird is a useful tool to encourage subscribers to use OTM, but a call to Springett et al…sort out real time listing NOW!
We recently switched software, to Qube. Upon switching, we were very happy to find out that our feed to OTM IS realtime. Our old software supplier told us that OTM didn’t accept realtime and had no plans to, but after querying this with OTM, it seems we were being misled!
Moral of the story: Don’t believe everything your supplier tells you.
OTM have had a real time feed for some while now.
I’m on OTM, been a huge supporter and less so more recently, but just so I know….
Why do buyers love the early bird? If all buyers go to OTM to see “the early bird property” how does the buyer benefit? Confused, or was this comment sarcastic and I have missed something.
I’m not trying to be funny, just trying to understand why buyers love it?
Looks like OTM now having to look behind them with All Agents announcement throwing their hat in the ring as well as in front. Time to get busy it seems with the appointment of extra field agents .
At least they are addressing poster’s concern of being unloved and ignored . The SP has rallied recently having dipped perilously close to a £1 .This game is far from over – Battle of Listings 2018.Interesting times ahead
Yawn.
Guess you’re on Zoopla and enjoy paying rightmove nearly £1000 pcm..?
Nope. I am one of the mugs on OTM