Prominent agency industry analyst Anthony Codling is asking agents whether the board of OnTheMarket did the right thing by firing Ian Springett.

Codling – a prominent analyst formerly at investment bank Jefferies – has issued a 10 question survey asking agents questions including whether they believe OTM was correct in yesterday’s sacking, and whether the portal is staying true to its aims of becoming an alternative to Rightmove and Zoopla.

It goes on to ask specifically where Springett’s replacement should come from – whether it should be from within the existing team at OTM, from the wider agency sector, from another existing property portal, or from an agency industry supplier, or from outside the residential sector completely.

In addition to some general questions about Rightmove and the wider portal landscape, Codling concludes by asking: “If you could make one change to the strategy of OnTheMarket, what would it be?”

At Jefferies, Codling became a prominent industry figure for his searing analyses of Purplebricks’ sales record, and then in 2018 Codling quit the bank and became chief executive of property search firm Rummage4Property.

In December 2018 he was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that Countrywide and some 30 other estate agency groups signed up to Rummage, alongside some of the UK’s largest housebuilders. He suggested that Rummage would offer a listing service for just over a tenth of the cost of Rightmove.

Specifically, he said Rummage4Property would begin by charging a flat fee of £1200 a month and would link any changes to house price inflation. “The key selling point is that it is much cheaper than Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket plc” he told the paper.

However, Rummage4Property has not moved in the direction suggested by Codling, and he himself left the company towards the end of 2019. He has since been linked with an organisation called twindig.