High Street estate agents used to be universally reviled for their sharp tactics and eye-watering commissions.
Today it’s almost possible to feel sorry them with the proliferation of successful property sites doing the job at a fraction of the cost.
Rightmove (LON:RMV), Zoopla and Purplebricks Group (LON:PURP) have taken the business model online and made hundreds of millions of pounds for the early backers of these businesses.
However, the fightback has begun, in fact, it began eight months ago when OnTheMarket PLC (LON:OTMP) listed.
The agent-backed company operates the property portal of the same name and based on figures released Tuesday it appears to be going from strength to strength.
Numbers doubled
It now signed more than 11,000 estate and letting agents to the site, double the number it had in February when it IPO’d on AIM.
Traffic is also through the roof with the company revealing it receive 17.4mln visits in September, having trebled virtual footfall in the last eight months.
That’s still some way short of industry leader Rightmove, which was averaging just under 140mln visits per month when it last updated the City.
Another sanity check: Rightmove has double the number of agents signed up to its service.
Rapidly building scale
“Our strategy to grow rapidly the scale of the portal is working and these latest milestones indicate that more property-seekers using OTM and viewing more properties - many of which are listed with us on a new and exclusive basis - is a recipe for generating more value to agents,” said chief executive Ian Springett.
“That value is not just in the direct advertising return we provide but also in creating much-needed competition in a market previously dominated by just two large portal groups."
While today’s figures will likely be applauded, there is one area that remains a disappointment for those who bought the stock on listing: the share price, which at 144p is still 21p below the price they paid.