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Rightmove Zoopla

Zoopla concedes loss of market share to OnTheMarket

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By John Glenday, Reporter

February 13, 2015 | 2 min read

Property portal Zoopla has conceded that it has taken a knock since the launch of rival platform OnTheMarket with the defection of estate agents and a loss of customers.

Run by a consortium of estate agents, including Savills and Knight Frank, the upstart rival has emerged as a serious threat to the dominance Zoopla has hitherto enjoyed in the sector – alongside market leader Rightmove.

One of OnTheMarket’s conditions of use is that agents may only advertise on one other portal, with 80 per cent of its 4,600 agents choosing to leave Zoopla rather than Rightmove.

As a direct consequence Zoopla recorded an 11 per cent decline in the number of agents advertising with it with a fall from 16,967 to 18,999.

Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman brushed off suggestion of any longer term damage however, asserting that these were only ‘short-term’ issues. He said: “We believe that Agents’ Mutual [OnTheMarket parent] remains a short-term event and that its success will be determined by whether consumers engage with it. So far it appears to have got off to a very slow start with consumers.”

Taking a more bullish stance was OnTheMarket chief executive ian Springett who said: “We are confident in becoming the number two portal within a year to replace Zoopla. Zoopla’s reference in this morning’s trading statement describing the launch of OnTheMarket.com as a ‘short-term event’ demonstrates just how out of touch it is with the commitment of our member agents to create a superior market-leading, mutually-run, property portal.”

Figures compiled by Hitwise show OnTheMarket averaging 14,000 hits a day compared to 1.4m for Zoopla.

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