Real estate website OnTheMarket reported its first annual profit since it was launched by a group of estate agents six years ago, as the UK housing market enjoyed a boom fueled by working from home and legal vacations stamp.

The company, 60% owned by agents, made a pre-tax profit of £ 1.1million as of January 31, down from a loss of £ 11.7million the year before. Its revenue rose 22% to £ 23million, helped by rising revenue from new residential developments listed on the website. It advertises both rentals and sales and counts 10 major home builders among its clients, including Crest Nicholson and Barratt, as well as thousands of real estate agents.

This offsets customer discounts of £ 2.6million to help agents get through the first coronavirus lockdown a year ago, when the housing market came to a halt. Since then, reduced stamp duties and the government’s purchase assistance program have helped the market rebound, as the shift to working from home has resulted in demand for larger properties with gardens outside the home. big cities.

Mortgage lender Halifax said on Monday that the average house price hit a new record high of £ 261,743 in May, as buyers rushed to complete their purchases before the stamp duty holiday was reduced at the end of this month.

Visits to the OnTheMarket website increased 13% to 267 million for the year, and there were 12,687 real estate advertisers at the end of January. The company was launched in 2015 to challenge the duopoly of Rightmove and Zoopla. It was founded by Agents’ Mutual, made up of Savills, Knight Frank, Chestertons, Strutt & Parker and London firms Douglas & Gordon and Glentree Estates. In February 2018, OnTheMarket was introduced to the Aim junior market in London.

“Despite the unprecedented conditions we faced, we continued to grow the business and achieve profitability,” said Jason Tebb, who became CEO in December. He expects the real estate market to remain dynamic even after the end of the stamp duty cut.

“The economic fundamentals remain. There is still a low cost of borrowing and huge pent-up demand, and very few properties on the market comparatively.

Tebb added that owners were “becoming more comfortable opening properties” for visitation as the Covid vaccination program progressed rapidly.

The company said it would reimburse the £ 449,000 it received from the government under the coronavirus job retention program.

OnTheMarket offers its members the ability to set monthly fees for listing properties for five years, giving agents the ability to control costs in the face of what he described as an increase in fees from Zoopla and Rightmove.

Clive Beattie, CFO, said: “We have no ambition to be as big as Rightmove or Zoopla because we don’t intend to charge as much.