A new property search service with hundreds of thousands of UK properties to buy or rent

will be launching in January 2015.

That new service will be called OnTheMarket.com. It is by far the most serious challenger in

recent years to the portals duopoly operated by Rightmove plc and Zoopla Property Group

plc. Indeed, many commentators and agents believe that it has the power to disrupt that

duopoly permanently.

More and more estate and lettings agents all over the UK are deciding to move the

advertising of their properties away from one of the current portal leaders and to display

them all at OnTheMarket.com.

That means it will immediately become a “must view” place to search for property, not least

because the vast majority of the properties on the portal will have been effectively removed

from Rightmove or Zoopla/Primelocation.

The importance of the “user experience” will be paramount. The property search will be slick,

simple, fast and state-of-the-art. No clutter from irritating and distracting third party ads. No

spam mail. No spurious online valuation tools. No unnecessary information over-load. Just

hundreds of thousands of UK properties to buy or rent at all price points all across the UK.

Every property you’ll see at OnTheMarket.com will be on the market with a locally-based

estate or letting agent with expertise on the ground. Property seekers, vendors and landlords

alike will have the confidence that they can speak face-to-face with the estate and letting

agents who are marketing any of the properties.

As an additional reassurance of the quality of its offering, OnTheMarket.com will be the only

portal to be endorsed by both the National Association of Estate Agents and the Association

of Residential Letting Agents.

There are still two to three months to go before OnTheMarket.com is due to go live. For the

time being, its management is keeping under wraps some of the features of the portal for

obvious reasons. But there is already such momentum behind the growth of agent support

and already such a buzz around it that one thing is clear: if you’re in the market to move

home next January, you won’t see all the properties on the market if you don’t search at

OnTheMarket.com.