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Property Service Holdings, parent company of agency brands Romans and Leaders, have signed an advertising agreement with Zoopla Property Group.
Property Service Holdings has over 150 estate agency branches across the UK and annual revenues of over £120m.
The deal is significant because although Leaders does list on Zoopla and Rightmove, until now the highly successful Romans has only ever listed on Rightmove.
It is thought the deal with Zoopla may have been a blow to OnTheMarket’s recruitment plans, which Romans appear to have been considering.
The new agreement with ZPG covers sales, lettings, new homes and auctions across the Group’s 150 branches and will see all properties listed on Zoopla, Prime Location and ZPG’s network of over 30 additional partner websites.
Peter Loverdos, chief operating officer at Property Service Holdings, said “We have been reviewing the property portal landscape for some time and as a result of the substantial marketing and innovative product ideas coming from ZPG, we decided that it is the right time to list all of our branches and properties with ZPG to the ultimate benefit of our customers.
“We expect to expand materially over the next few years and need the right mix of partners to support our exciting growth strategy and we look forward to a long and productive partnership with the ZPG team.”
Mark Goddard, managing director of ZPG’s Property division, said: “We are delighted to have agreed a long partnership with Property Service Holdings to cover both their leading agency brands and are looking forward to providing a range of services across their 150-strong branch network as we continue to deliver record audience levels, leads and market leading products to our partners in 2017.”
Leaders and Romans, both backed by Bowmark Capital, merged under the over-arching name of Property Service Holdings last March.
Interesting, wonder how hard OTM were working on it…..please OTM change your strategy to get more agent’s stock on your site, so you win more of these battles!
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That was clearly a lettings not sales driven decision then, because in most of the higher end towns Romans predominantly operate in, promoting you’ll be advertising their property on Zoopla would be the equivilant of swinging on to their driveway in an old mondeo, back bumper held on with Duck tape (other brands are available) and telling them you’ll stick their details in your back windows.
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Yet another agency bypassing OTM when we should all be supporting them. How were they ever going to work without us all listing with them.
RM & Zoopla must be chuckling to themselves (whilst counting the pennies) that us agents haven’t got the balls to support the only portal that’s ever really wanted to support us.
This is just another nail in the OTM coffin. Nice one Romans. More money than sense.
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oh dear oh dear oh dear…… if any one see’s my OTM rep (assuming it is still the same one who spoke to me in January 2015) can they tell them to drop me a line on how the “mission” is going? I’ve had Zoopla visit me more!
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Well done. Now maybe zoopla can get back to the business of toppling Rightmove as number 1 portal.
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“Now maybe zoopla can get back to the business of toppling Rightmove as number 1 portal.”
LOL – for those people who think they’re complete t**ts NOW…
…just wait until Bless You’s vision for the future becomes a reality!
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No chance. Only OTM could have toppled RM.
Who here would seriously drop RM for Z?
The chance to have a new number 1, has gone FOREVER.
Never ever should we hear a non AM member moan about portals, we had our chance. I applaud those who supported it and still do, however if Z could be number 1, it would be already…
I just wish one day we will understand and believe we are what makes the property portals work…. they need us much more than we need them FACT.
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God how right you are.RM and ZPG have the industry by the dangly bits and if OTM fail we are domed to a life of them charging what they like and threatening our very existence
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Just to remind everyone how those outside of property see the power of portals to charge ever higher charges and why the industry needs to unite to create RM mk 2 in other words OTM. OTM need to wake up to the fact that the corporates have now sold their last holdings in the portals and now need to address their falling margins. Can you imagine the savings across all of the corporates advertising bills.The only reason that there is procrastination is the developers are flexing their muscles over wanting the presence to remain!!
The following is from an investor bulletin board about Rightmove and how it just keeps pushing prices up.
But, as a Floridian who saw first hand the damage done when the property bubble burst in 2007, I view property-related companies as cyclical, often highly-leveraged and unlikely to deliver the same long-term returns as companies with more stable income. This may be thickheaded but it’s also why the only property share I’d ever consider buying is online platform Rightmove (LSE: RMV).
The main attraction of Rightmove is the way it dominates its sector. Sure, there are major competitors such as Zoopla and smaller options such as OnTheMarket, but Rightmove’s 77% market share is more than triple that of its nearest rival. And this dominant position is virtually untouchable as more visitors to the site forces more agents to list their properties there, which then leads to more visitors because the site offers the widest selection of properties.
This market-leading position soothes my doubts about the property sector for several reasons. For one, it means agents are unlikely to switch to a competitor even during a downturn. And, since agents pay a flat monthly fee rather than per listing, even a decrease in the number of homes for sale wouldn’t wreck Rightmove’s business model. This, of course, makes Rightmove far less cyclical than estate agents or housebuilders.
Pricing power
Second, being the go-to choice for consumers and estate agents alike gives Rightmove incredible pricing power. In the first six months of 2016 the average revenue per agent rose 12% year-on-year to £830 per month. And, the combination of charging high prices and running an asset-light business means margins are through the roof. In the same period Rightmove’s operating margins rose to an astonishing 74.6%.
With this level of profitability and little need for pricey capital expenditure, Rightmove can return bundles of cash to shareholders. Of the £80.6m of pre-tax profits recorded in the six months to June a full £66m was returned to shareholders. £25.4m of this came through dividends and a further £40.8m in share buybacks, which is also a positive as it suggests management believes the shares are still undervalued. And even after these major cash outflows the company still maintained a very healthy £13.3m of cash on hand at period-end.
The downside to these key strengths is that plenty of other investors love them as well. That’s why Rightmove shares now trade at a pricey 29.5 times forward earnings. This is certainly a premium price, but I reckon its not an insane one for a company with dominant market share, a wide moat to entry for competitors and a fantastically well-run, co-founder-led business.
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I’m sorry, Agents Mutual – but when someone like Ric feels it necessary to make open statements like the one above, you’ve got to come to terms with the reality that you have URGENT repair work on your hands.
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Hmmm… someone who DOESN’T agree with my saying that AM have a problem on their hands?
Or some Plank with a ‘Dislike’ button fetish?
Which is it, I wonder…
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Sorry back in the room, mad day.
Indeed…. A big worry, or maybe not….. I am a tiny ikkle fish in a very big pond.
Will I turn to Zoopla – No… only one portal needed. That opinion stands fast.
But so disappointing, I simply only hear/read about OTM via EYE.
It seems RM is here to stay! I tried to help by joining AM, but alas not enough have done likewise.
Letters of Intent became a bit laughable it seems.
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Just got to accept that rightmove got their first like in most business successes.
onthemarket needs to be £100 p/m now for my support or they need to let corporates on.
Only rule we need is you have to have an office in the 20 miles you ‘claim’ to sell houses in and you are strictly NO SALE NO FEE
Remember what your old boss would have said…’its a numbers game’
This means we need as much stock on onthemarket as possible and kill purplebricks at the same time.
RIGHMOVE was made big by the corporates, that’s why it took 10 years for me to sell out and go on rightmove. Iam now on it because of onthemarket (go figure)
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“Just got to accept that rightmove got their first like in most business successes.”
It can have a different outcome, you know – Betamax ‘got there first’ – and lost out to VHS in the video format stakes. Sony were head and shoulders ahead of JVC in terms of worldwide brand awareness at the time – yet the lesser-regarded company’s offering was chosen as the standard and romped home… with second place nowhere in sight.
“Only rule we need is you have to have an office in the 20 miles you ‘claim’ to sell houses in and you are strictly NO SALE NO FEE”
That’s two rules, actually. Flawed ones, at that. What some ‘claim’ and what they actually ‘do’ are two completely different bowls of cereal. And on that same ‘rule’ – what is your definition of “office”? I have an office at home – I’m sure many others do. Thanks to the impact of PPG3, and its’ successor PPS3, of the Planning Act, there are now home offices/’live:work’ areas being incorporated into homes all over the nation. On my patch only a few weeks ago, and Agent advertised a property which featured a ‘Home Office’. IT WAS A SHED. From what I could see, a completely rotten one at that.
And why ‘strictly NSNF’? Many ‘traditional’… ‘High-Street’-based… very successful… Agents operate Fee models that allow them to make a charge for abortive works and/or additional services. Are you going to preclude them from the portal?
You have made a commercial decision to join Rightmove, Bless You – please don’t further weaken what you say by shrugging the blame on to OTM or anything else. I hope that decision turns out to be the right one for you.
Because, despite what you have remembered from your old boss – it isn’t JUST a Numbers Game.
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” heads gone”
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I’m assuming you mean me, Eamonn – so no surprises to anyone there!
Care to expand on the why’s and wherefore’s, in your considered opinion, said head has gone?
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An office / shop where you put your money and not just your mouth into running a genuine service for buyers as well as sellers.
Online agents need to start having disclaimers like the financial industry:
‘We may not actually offer any sale on your property as well as your risk probably going down it might go up’
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I wonder why, after so long, they decided to join up with Zoopla? It could have been the price they were offered.
I also wonder why OTM cannot sign up with ‘partner websites’?
Rightmove do it with high traffic sites such as homeandproperty for example. I can think of at least 100 sites that would make great great partners and increase OTM’s traffic a few percent. It would also have a positive effect on their online ‘authority’ – which in turn helps to increase organic traffic.
*****
If you have a few minutes here’s a really good read some of you might have missed:
http://showcase.reapit.com/irr/
In this report, we look at over 278,000 enquiries received by Estate Agents and Letting Agents in the first half of 2016. We explore the trends and differences in how, when and by which of the major property portals the enquiries were generated and how they were handled, or indeed not handled by agents. We also look at what happened subsequent to the registration.
Zoopla Vs RM Vs OTM
They didn’t ask me to confirm my email address when I downloaded it a few weeks back so if using your real email address is a worry then don’t fear.
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A close friend used to, till recently, work for Romans and we used to have a good old laugh about Zoopla. Apparently John Notely used to approach them more or less every month for the last five or so years, practically begging them to join. The line was always that they were fine with Rightmove, so why would they need Zoopla – unless it was free.
So, I can only guess that that’s exactly what Zoopla have offered – free of charge!
I will look up my old matey to see what she has to say…
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