OnTheMarket has announced that it is expanding the scope and scale of its virtual Town Hall initiative, designed to give more agents a voice, as part of the CEO Jason Tebb’s pledge to learn what it is that agents expect from the property portal.

Following the first sessions of this year, which were fully-booked, additional dates have been added to the original schedule of events, with attendee capacity expanded to cater for increasing interest from agents.

In addition to continuing the virtual events, a series of in-person Town Halls will take place for the first time later this year.

Launched in early 2021, the virtual Town Halls give all OTM members the opportunity to join a group meeting chaired by Tebb, to directly discuss any topic they wish.

To date, the sessions have enabled representatives and business owners from over 1,000 agency brands to share their thoughts openly.

As well as adding an extra set of dates to the virtual Town Hall series, each virtual event due to take place throughout the rest of year will have double the capacity of previous events, with each session being open to 50 attendees.

An in-person tour hosted by Tebb will take place later this year, expanding the capacity of the events and giving a greater number of agents the opportunity to come together and engage with OTM. More details to be confirmed closer to the time.

Tebb commented: “Originally, I’d only planned to run events with our agents so I could understand what they wanted and where they felt OnTheMarket needed to do things differently. It became clear very early on that it wasn’t only me who found them useful, they did too.

“The key topics debated and discussed in those initial Town Hall sessions included what agents thought about the TV advert, our previous Market Appraisal Guides and the need for more functionality and services around lettings.

“As has been evident by our actions over the past few months, the team and I took all of this on board, leading to the launch of our new brand, website and TV advert in December, alongside our commercial partnerships with Sprift and Canopy that were announced earlier last year. All of these announcements were direct results of our Town Halls.”

With our last round of Town Halls selling out, and a growing number of agents registering interest in attending the next series, it’s clear to me that now is the time to expand the series to meet this demand.

Tebb added: “I’m really excited about launching our in-person sessions across the country later in the summer as well as doubling our capacity for the ongoing virtual events, giving agents more choice in how they engage with their portal throughout 2022 and beyond. At its heart, this is a listening tour, and I can’t wait to hear what agents have to say.

“Now is the time to make bold choices as an industry and these events are the perfect forum for us and our agents to have these conversations.”