Zoopla takes hit as rival shakes up UK online home search market

* Thousands of estate agents leave Zoopla

* Says rival OnTheMarket not gaining traction with buyers

* Zoopla shares fall 3.2 pct

By Paul Sandle

LONDON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The owner of Britain's Zoopla andPrime Location property websites said it had been deserted bythousands of estate agents since the launch of rival portalOnTheMarket, but insisted the new company would struggle to winover home buyers and sellers.

Zoopla Property Group and market leader Rightmove have dominated the British online property search marketfor years but are now facing a major challenge from OnTheMarket,which launched last month.

The new website is owned by Agents' Mutual, a companylaunched and backed by estate agents. It is shaking up thesector as its rules require estate agents to restrict listingsto OnTheMarket and only one of its two big rivals.

Zoopla said it currently counted 13,402 British estateagency branches as members, down from 16,373 in September, andthat 500 branches had given notice but were still paying fees.Analysts said this suggested it had lost 3,471 members in totalsince the launch of OnTheMarket.

Shares in Zoopla were down 3.2 percent at 180 pence at 1024GMT.

But Zoopla boss Alex Chesterman said he believed the newwebsite would struggle to gain traction with consumers. He saiddata from web analytics firm Hitwise indicated OnTheMarket hadattracted an average of 14,000 visits per day in its first twoweeks, versus almost 1.4 million per day for Zoopla.

Zoopla had a company record 50.5 million visits in January,Chesterman said, and some agents were already beginning toreturn to the platform.

Agents' Mutual was not immediately available to comment.

Analysts at Jefferies said OnTheMarket's rule restrictingagents to using just one of its rivals had taken its toll onZoopla's membership numbers, with the majority of agentssticking with Rightmove in preference to Zoopla.

It now expects Zoopla's agent numbers to fall by more than18 percent this financial year to around 13,400, against itsprevious estimate of about a 10 percent fall, and it downgradedits core earnings forecast by 17 percent to 36.6 million pounds.

But it also questioned whether OnTheMarket had stamina.

"Zoopla has more hits per day than there were housingtransactions in 2014; whilst a number of agents may have leftZoopla, for now, it appears that the home-buying public remainconvinced of Zoopla's attractions," Jefferies said. (Editing by Pravin Char)

Rightmove