The CEO of a large estate agency says OnTheMarket is now providing more lettings leads to his firm than Rightmove.
Long-standing OTM advocate Rob Sargent, CEO of the Acorn Group which has 35 offices across south-east London and Kent, said he was pleased when he received the latest portal statistics.
He said: “I was delighted when I read our recent statistics on portal leads that our sales leads from OnTheMarket have doubled, our lettings leads have tripled and for the first time our lettings leads are beginning to exceed the leads that are generated by Rightmove.”
The firm has been a strong supporter of OTM since it launched in 2015 and lists only with Rightmove and OnTheMarket – the two of whom are at loggerheads.
As part of a video testimonial for OTM, Sargent added: “The quality of the OnTheMarket leads are certainly of a higher level and there is no question that the buyers and vendors who are coming through that channel are a little bit more motivated.
“We view our relationship with OnTheMarket very much as a partnership.
“We see it for the long term and we see some mutual respect and understanding of the commercial realities that exist on our side of the fence.
“We look forward to not getting to the end of every year and being asked for more money for what is fundamentally the same service.
“There is no debate that all the agents nationally in the UK should be using OnTheMarket.
“We as a business would not hesitate to recommend OnTheMarket, and for agents who see the bigger picture and want to secure their own future, it’s definitely the place to be.”
OTM chief executive Ian Springett said: “These excellent lead results demonstrate how OnTheMarket is continuing to make huge strides forward with the value we provide to estate and letting agent customers.
“Our marketing drive has ramped up since Boxing Day and will continue throughout January with TV and radio campaigns as well as outdoor advertising, so we are looking forward to a strong month for traffic to the website.
“Our continued progress in attracting more agents to support the portal and our early success in attracting house-builders give us encouragement as we focus on achieving our key objectives for the coming year.”
OTM has over 12,500 agents listing on it, up from 5,500 at the time of its admission to the AIM stock market almost two years ago.
Most of the agents that have joined since then initially signed up to free trials. Some 3,000 of these are now on paying contracts.
Comments (17)
Genuinely intrigued by the long obsession in the industry with quantity over quality. Has anyone run the numbers for their business to understand what sort of conversion rates they are getting on lettings and sales leads from different portals?
Quantity really means nothing if the lead quality is low. Our staff are the lifeblood of an agency, and their time is limited. Poor leads just cost negotiators valuable time that could have operationally been spent doing all sorts of other things, such as winning new instructions and so on.
I am curious to hear what the conversion numbers look across OTM/Zoopla/RM for anyone who has done the fairly simple math!
lurker0345… I have only one thing to say in response to your post –
COMMENT OF THE WEEK!!
One person walking through the door of your office is worth (insert number here) portal “leads”.
The reason I didn’t quote a number is of course that there is no ‘standard’ – but whatever number you would place in there yourself, it’s significant.
Online Agents literally live off “leads”. The only opportunities they have to do face-to-face business is on appointment – or by meeting someone in the street, supermarket or pub. And I for one have done plenty of business in my local Tesco over the years… but only because people already ‘knew me’ from my previous interactions with them in-branch.
Personally, yes I agree – the amount of leads from OTM are greater than RM, however the quality is shocking, sick of RM’s high costs but the quality is far greater, to be fair Zoopla are out performing both in terms of quantity and quality at the moment. Really want OTM to succeed, but can’t support the poor quality leads – removing properties once let or sold has been a constant issue, raised this with the rep on a visit months ago, no feedback. Neither our sales or lettings are happy to remain with OTM on this basis – such a shame.
My main issue with OTM is their email alerts. I like to know what is coming to the market in my area, Rightmove & Zoopla send me daily updates, OTM sends out the same properties every week telling me they are new to the market but they are not. Yesterday I received 29 email alerts from OTM, all of the properties were sent to me a number of times over the last month but they are listed as new. A local agent games the system and sends out the same properties at least twice a week as does a national developer. I did speak to someone at OTM about this, they did not care that they were doing this. At least Zoopla and Rightmove don’t play this childish game.
Ha! I wish this was reflected in my stats as OTM costs less… as far as I’m concerned these claims are pure fantasy.
In my experience on lettings, most leads are on let properties as a result of poor quality FB exposure (and BTW why are OTM helping FB build their property ad business??) and sales leads are so minimal as to be irrelevant.
i think OTM are on way out and are getting their fan boys to have one last go as they approach end of initial contracts.
Hi mmmm
Just to give a little context to your comments, where is your business and what are your core income streams (just in general terms)?
We for instance are SE London, Kent and NE Kent Corridor. Our business is pretty balanced between sales and lettings.
I ask, as people’s experiences may differ regionally. If we openly share what’s happening and provide context maybe our costs/spend on all portals can be brought under control.
After all the Estate Agents of the UK are the King Makers when it comes to portals, and not the other way round?
Thoughts?
Robert Sargent
The Acorn Group
Sorry, my thumbs down should have been a thumbs up! Completely agree with you. OTM is serving us well and we left Rightmove years ago. Don’t need them.
we are Lettings only in west London.
Well having been gifted shares and they are currently languishing every little bit of PR helps ,I guess .That however doesn’ excuse the dreadul Advertising campaign
t’s clear that Springett has alienated a vast number of agents who wont be returning whilst he is still on the premises Looking at the numbers progress has been very modest and likely to hit a ceilng
The company is rapidly running out of cash which means more share dilution likely with a potential capital raise
Perhaps you can exert some leverage as a valued customer to seek some regime change
If you are still using RM for letting you are wasting your money. Left over 2 years ago and use OTM & Zoopla only.
I have noticed a lot of agents on forums, deciding to leave, RM on lettings. Many and me included have noticed we get more and better quality leads for lettings from OTM.
We all want to poke RM in the eye but most of us are scared of not being on RM. I too am going to serve notice on RM for lettings. Already I take none of their extra packages, so this should keep my RM spend down to £850pm.
Reading the comments of many people who have left RM, they have used the 0,000’s they save to invest in social media, which seems to bring in the vendors which RM doesn’t. I mean, I never get RM valuation leads and those that do, then have to compete with up to 5 other agents.
I want to leave RM, completely, but I am going to start with lettings. Would be great if we all did the same thing.
”so this should keep my RM spend down to £850pm.”
…until Rightmove emails you (in however many weeks) ‘informing’ you that, in their view, you’ve had a great deal for far too long, and little (circa) 20% increase in your monthly subscription is nothing to worry about 😉
Same for us and has been for some while. Not quite there on sales yet but the gap is narrowing all the time.
Over the last 11 months we had more sales enquiries via OTM than RM, and of those enquiries around 1 in 4 went on the purchase.
Whilst the stats suggest RM isn’t the magic dust it once was, try telling that to a vendor on a listing. If agent A is on RM and agent B isn’t, for now they’ll still go agent A. Much like the newspapers were; no one was looking in them but everyone wanted to be in them!
Similar for my firm too, which helped to give RM notice following another attempted price increase and we came off on 31/01, bye bye!
No agent needs Rightmove, get rid now.
“…and we came off on 31/01, bye bye!”
So – almost a year free of Rightmove, Jrsteeve?
Sorry, typo, was 31/12/19 that we came off. Investing the money saved in other methods of lead generation to build us up.
IMHO, it is talk of ‘volume’ of leads that has allowed RM to retain the mythical “top spot” in terms of portals performance, and thus agents happily allow them to continue to set their fee levels, with impunity.
Stop talking ‘volume’, and start talking ‘quality’…Review actual deals completed Vs origination, and you’ll RM falling well short (and certainly not living up to the ‘top spot’ position it likes to trumpet at any given opportunity)…