Part Three: CoStar’s £100million bid for OTM.com – a smash and grab deal that must be resisted by OTM’s shareholders!

By Trevor Abrahmsohn, Founder OTM and CEO Glentree International.

You have probably read a good deal of media comment about the ‘smash and grab’ bid by the multi-billion-dollar US portal group CoStar, for the UK agent owned, publicly listed, residential portal OnTheMarket.com (OTM).

I was the original founder of OTM in 2010 and was motivated to start a disrupter site since the two incumbents, Rightmove and Zoopla, were abusing their duopolos position in the marketplace, by charging agents what they liked for their subscription fees and by doing so, made a glutinous profit. Continue reading

Offer of £100 million for the share capital of OnTheMarket.com by the CoStar Group

On The Market

By Trevor Abrahmsohn, Glentree International.

I founded OnTheMarket.com (OTM) in November 2010 following a secret meeting which I set up with ‘the great and the good’ of the estate agency industry, in the Cellar Room of Zafferano Restaurant in Belgravia.

My driving force was that I was sick to my stomach with the ever-increasing tariffs charged to my agency, Glentree, by Rightmove and Zoopla at the time and I thought it would be an excellent idea to assemble twelve of the heads of the most illustrious estate agents across the UK. Continue reading