OnTheMarket plc (LON: OTMP), the owner of agent-backed property portal OnTheMarket.com, has today announced that, as at 8 April 2019, the portal now has over one million people using its property alert service.
Ian Springett, Chief Executive Officer of OnTheMarket plc, says:
“OnTheMarket is continuing to close the gap with Rightmove in terms of engagement with currently active property-seekers. That over one million people are already using our property alert service indicates the agent-backed portal is delivering an increasingly relevant service for the property-seeking public. This is creating growing value for our agent advertisers and is an important step towards providing them with a market-leading alternative to Rightmove and Zoopla.”
Property alerts are an important indicator of consumer engagement with a portal as they are used by property-seekers who wish to be notified immediately when a property meeting their search criteria becomes available or is subject to a change such as a price reduction. A key reason for the most serious property-seekers in the market to sign up for an alert with OnTheMarket is that they will be first to see any relevant “New & exclusive” properties: OnTheMarket displays thousands of new properties every month 24 hours or more before they are on Rightmove or Zoopla.
To place this milestone in context, in its 2018 results announcement, Rightmove stated that ‘over two million people’ had received property alerts from it during the year.
Rightmove further stated that it had sent 781M instant alert emails in the year. OnTheMarket sent 526M instant alert emails in the year – some 67% of the Rightmove figure.
OnTheMarket announced on 6 February 2019 that it displayed over 600,000 UK residential property listings, which is approximately 60% of the number claimed by Rightmove.
The main property portals attract usage also by consumers who are not currently active in the market or from professional users, such as estate and lettings agents. The Board of OnTheMarket believes that a high proportion of those using its portal are active property-seekers. This is evident from the volume of leads being delivered to agents and from feedback from many of those agents confirming the high quality of the leads.
