Rightmove has this morning confirmed that negotiations for online letting agent, OpenRent, to continue to list on the portal have terminated.
A statement to the markets said:
Rightmove plc, the UK’s number one property portal, updates that its contract with OpenRent will terminate with effect from 1 September 2024, as conditions for OpenRent’s ongoing Rightmove membership could not be agreed.
Rightmove reiterates its FY 2024 revenue and margin guidance. We continue to anticipate revenue growth of 7-9% and an underlying operating margin of 70%, when excluding the one-off acquisition costs and Coadjute investment. These are both in line with market expectations.
OpenRent is classified as an online lettings agent within Rightmove’s Estate Agency (Lettings) sub-segment and represents approximately 700 branch equivalents, with less than 8% of Rightmove’s lettings listings in July 2024. As has been seen recently, market dynamics – within lettings in particular – are fluid. While we remain confident of delivering revenue and margin in line with the guidance above, the precise mix of membership and ARPA may vary. Our current estimate is that membership will decline by up to 3% year-on-year, with a year-on-year increase in ARPA of £90-£100.
OpenRent’s landlord customers will therefore lose access to the UK’s largest property-seeking audience. Rightmove remains the place for consumers to find more UK properties than any other portal, and in H1 2024, delivered 8 times the number of properties rented than the next largest portal. Over 80% of all consumer time spent on property portals continues to be spent on Rightmove.
Resale listings on Rightmove are entirely unaffected by this change.
Good for Open Rent. Letting agents do not need Rightmove and they certainly don’t need to be put under cost pressures buy a sub par cost abusive supplier. It’s a shame the rest of the market doesn’t follow suit and stop this supplier abusing their market position.
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The current lettings market does not require Rightmove. The supply demand situation is generating more applicants per property than professional letting agents know what to do with. Now more than ever, agents should have the confidence to terminate their letting arrangements with Rightmove.
It’s time to stop the fee racket……….
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Interesting – so will open rent down reduce there fee substantially if they don’t have access to Rightmove (the most expensive portal) anymore ???
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do feel free to FO
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Note that Rightmove had to issue a statement to the City as a consequence of Open Rent terminating them (as it seems is actually the case via non renewal).
This means that for Rightmove, this loss of one of their biggest customers is a big deal indeed.
A couple of things…
Rightmove’s share price lost 6% of its value in the first 15 minutes of trading this morning. Coincidence? Other property stocks did not decline and so this drop was not a ‘sector or a markets thing’.
We should keep a close eye on Open Rent’s listings. RM say they represent the equivalent of 700 branch offices and 8% of their lettings listings. If Open Rent’s volumes are not affected by coming away from RM then surely many other Lettings businesses will follow suit? Why wouldn’t they?
Especially as RM just reiterated in their City statement that they WILL be pushing agents’ subscriptions up by £100 each year.
Make no mistake, this development could spell big trouble for the formerly unassailable portal.
Oh, it looks like Open Rent are staying with Zoopla. That’s telling.
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Rightmove say that they “delivered 8 times the number of properties rented than the next largest portal” – assume Zoopla. This is THE stat I will be using when contacting the landlords I’ve lost to Openrent.
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Sweet Jesus, are you even in this industry?
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I’m in it enough to know that we have been losing let only landlords for several years to Openrent in the main because they have subsidised the cost of Rightmove. I am very glad this has happened and frankly that they have lost one of their main advantages. Its only a matter of time before they end up offering PM and if they apply the same subsidy to grow their volume enough to be able to operate at significant economies of scale then this may cause me (and I suspect you) a significant problem. They already do rent collection for £10 a month. It sounds like you are in the industry, but that you haven’t been paying too much attention to the fact that you have a very serious competitor who has been providing a pretty good service, access to the property portals, a pretty good platform and at a cost that is lower than you.
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The second largest portal currently is OTM, which has consistently held the top position for Lettings.
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Time will tell if this was a good move or not. It seems OR left due to the fee being offered rather than RM terminating the contract. I seriously doubt OR would have allowed relations to sour so badly without a backup plan.
An 8% loss is not exactly small for RM either (any business), no matter how much they try to sugar (or slime) coat it shareholders are watching, all the agents are now watching. If another big name leaves I think it’ll be game on to negotiate the fee down, what do you think?
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“If another big name leaves I think it’ll be game on to negotiate the fee down, what do you think?”
Beware low flying pigs. Sadly, as our industry has shown, we seem quite happy to be royally ………… each year by 10% increases for the last 15 years or more, come recession or whatever. 70%+ profit margin may make RM an investor’s darling, but “never in the field of estate agency, has so much vitriol been directed by so many customers towards a single provider”.
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The more agents who stand up to RM, the better for our industry. They are the biggest leech of profit in Estate Agency
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We’ll put up a property to rent across all portals, our database/website and pull it down an hour later because we’ve already got 10 viewings, why go to 100 when you’ve already got to say “no” 9 times, why make it 99?
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And to continue the theme, lets say that’s a 99 Flake ( showing my age ) and you’ve eaten a shedload of them to the point you could burst , along comes Willy Wanka RM with the opinion you should buy a hell of a lot more from them instead, at 10x the unit price of the ones you’ve already consumed because if you don’t, nobody will like you.
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I would say Rightmove are in third place for lettings and they know it.
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Anyone saying agents dont need Rightmove is either not an agent or has no grip on reality. Yep I do agree that Zoopla leads are 50/50 with rightmove so you could survive without RM but you wont grow. lettings is about 800 a month put your fees up and stop doing OpenRent lets if you think its expensive rents are at the highest we have have in the last 20 odd years stop been tight, Drop OTM (in my opinion a huge steaming terd) just have a basic rightmove and call Zoopla and ask for a reduction to pay towards it win win situation.
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So stay with your obese, abusive hygiene compromised other half of the last 2.5 decades but cultivate a side hustle?
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I can’t believe I’m reading such nonsense—completely brainwashed at 90 degrees.
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I find modern estate agency really strange, we never used to moan about £300pw for a page of 1 pic black and white in a paper that was only viewed for 3 days and then ended up at the bottom of a budgie cage. But we moan about 1500pcm for unlimited photos video tours that can be viewed millions of times, we have for the last 20 years plus used the comps they give us access to in every val we go on (unless you are a Poundland agent and dont have access to the portal) I think estate agents need to pull up their trousers start getting real fees on vals stop moaning about cheap fees and spend that time considering why they are worth fees that make the portal costs irrelevant. If not come off rightmove if it doesn’t work for you and your business dont use it really simple.
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You make a fair point albeit that a full page in colour in a typical local paper cost far more than £300 20 years ago and, yes, I did moan about it: a regular income for the local papers to which only car sales ads could compare.
But part of the context is that over the same period fees have fallen, mainly as a consequence of cross-selling referral fee services whereby the hapless and gullible vendor is ill-equipped to appreciate the difference between a fee based at a realistic level and that discounted by the corporates chasing numbers. A whole new can of worms I accept, but if you enter into this torrid mix, a portal that has hiked prices each year by 10%+ you’re bound to witness disquiet from most of the independents.
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However, there was a cost for type-setting, printing and distribution of the paper and knowing it was distributed to XThousand locals. Once a platform is in place, RM do not have to lift a finger as we do all the print-setting (Some agents badly sadly) and publishing plus payig for the virtual tours (if not just a cheap montage). Web Hosting is cheap, employee levels are proportionately low in the tech sector compared to the days of printing/distribution while the ability to offer all of this for a relatively small %age of RM costs is demonstrated by Zoopla and OTM. We should not be comparing a peach with a lemon!
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Well, you could look at it like that, equally you could look at it that every dog has it’s day,the local rags did as will this static, sterile, PLC.
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I’ve heard that Rightmove is preparing to offer services similar to OpenRent for private landlords. It seems likely that they will eventually become an online sales agent for private properties, much like Autotrader with cars sales, with all the support of paying agents.
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We left RM sales and lettings during lockdown. Customers didn’t really mind, but it was other agents, ruining it, by contacting all of our customers.
We returned, sales only.
All of our lettings leads come from OTM and Zoopla. We get more leads than we can handle. Every EA should at least leave RM for lettings.
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This situation with Rightmove very simple – just list elsewhere. Plenty of choices available. Can’t think of any business in UK or worldwide making c.70% profits as most have been suckers for Rightmoves speil & arrogance.
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