EYE NEWSFLASH: Rightmove post ‘strong’ full year results as agency membership grows

Rightmove has published its audited results for the year ended 31 December 2025, reporting what it describes as “clear value recognition” from both agents and consumers.

The portal recorded a 2% increase in agency membership during the year and its second-highest estate agency retention rate in more than a decade. It also reported strong uptake of its top-tier packages across Estate Agency and New Homes, while its AI-enabled online Agent Valuation product achieved its fastest-ever adoption rate.

On the consumer side, Rightmove said it ended the year with a record share of time spent on the platform – 89% according to Comscore and 75% based on SimilarWeb, data.ai and Sensor Tower. More than 85% of traffic was direct or organic, alongside increased use of recently launched features, several of which are powered by AI.

Strong financial growth:

+ Revenue and underlying operating profit both +9%

+ Strategic growth areas of Commercial Property, Mortgages, and Rental Services combined revenue up 25% year-on-year

+ Basic earnings per share (EPS) +15% and underlying EPS +11%

 

Technology innovation and AI integration accelerated, adding value for partners and consumers:

+ 24% more products/features released: years of progressing our data and technology has enabled 31 live AI initiatives and products across the entire business today, including the most recently launched conversational search and an app submission to ChatGPT

+ Multi-year collaboration with Google Cloud spanning infrastructure, platform, data and AI capabilities

+ As set out in the November 2025 guidance, 2026 Rightmove says it will see accelerated investment in Consumer and Partner innovation, AI-powered operations and new growth initiatives: delivering further value and supporting sustained double-digit growth into the medium term and beyond

+ £90m share buyback announced today, to be completed by 31 July 2026; final dividend of c.£50m will be paid in May 2026

 

Financial highlights

All metrics in line with guidance:

 

2025

2024

Change vs 2024

% Change vs 2024

Revenue

£425.1m

£389.9m

£35.2m

+9%

Operating profit

£287.9m

£256.3m

£31.6m

+12%

Underlying operating profit(4)

£297.7m

£273.9m

£23.8m

+9%

Final dividend per share

6.59p

6.10p

0.49p

+8%

Basic earnings per share

28.1p

24.4p

3.7p

+15%

Underlying basic earnings per share(6)

29.1p

26.2p

2.9p

+11%

 

+ Revenue grew by 9% on 2024, as Agency and New Homes developer partners chose to invest in products and new packages. Total membership increased 1% across Agency and New Homes

+ Operating profit up 12% reflecting increased revenue, disciplined cost management and the absence of any one-off transaction-related costs (2024: £9.2m)

+ Underlying operating profit up 9% and with underlying operating profit margin of 70%, in line with full-year guidance

+ Final dividend up 8% to 6.59p per share (2024: 6.10p). Total dividend up 9% to 10.64p (2024: 9.8p) 

+ £219.7m of surplus cash returned to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends (2024: £181.7m), an increase of 21% year on year.  21.4m shares (3% of outstanding share capital) purchased and cancelled (2024: 18.8m, 2%)

+ Basic earnings per share up 15%, with 11% growth in underlying basic earnings per share

 

ARPA and Membership

Average Revenue per Advertiser (£)

2025

2024

 Change vs

2024

% Change vs 2024

Agency

1,530

1,440

90

6%

New Homes

2,135

1,987

148

7%

Total ARPA

1,621

1,524

97

6%

 

Membership

31 Dec

2025

31 Dec 2024

Change vs

 2024

% Change vs 2024

Agency branches

16,385

16,124

261

2%

New Homes developers

2,887

2,923

(36)

(1%)

Total membership

19,272

19,047

225

1%

+ Average Revenue per Advertiser (ARPA) grew by £97 (+6%), with growth predominantly product-led, across both Agency and New Homes

+ Total membership increased marginally, driven by growth in Agency members reflecting both high retention and increased new agent formation

+ Agent formation was the highest on record, as new entrants were encouraged by a more favourable market, aided by lowering interest and mortgage rates

+ New Homes developments’ marginal decrease reflects continued lower levels of new builds coming to market

+ Average total membership across the year increased 2% on 2024, with Estate Agency branches up 372 (+2%) and New Homes developments up 40 (+1%)

 

Operational highlights

+ Consumer:

+ Sustained high engagement and traffic growth, the second highest on record, with 16.8 billion minutes spent on the platform in the year, up 2% (2024: 16.4 billion).  Over 85% of traffic was direct and organic

+ Share of time remained strong at >80% per Comscore (89% in December 2025) and >70% per SimilarWeb/Data.ai/SensorTower (75% in December 2025)

+ Engagement numbers doubled across social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok, which reach all generations of home movers). Rightmove says its strong base of mobile app user recorded a year-on-year 11% increase and we grew the number of consumers subscribed to our marketing CRM by 15%, to c.10m

 

Partner:

+ Continued growth in the uptake of our top packages:

 ‘Optimiser Edge’ for estate agents, with 35% of independent estate agents subscribing (December 2024: 31%); and

 Launch of a new top package ‘Ascend’ for New Homes developers in May, with 28% of developments on the new package by year end

+ Incremental product spend within packages delivered strong ARPA growth as partners increased usage of existing products and purchased new products

+ More than 50% of independent agents purchased incremental product above their package commitment, highlighting the value that they see from our products

+ Products continue to provide strong outcomes for partners, for example, delivering 7 out of 10 vendor instructions within resale, and 8 out of 10 tenants for lettings properties

+ Retention of existing agency partners was above 90%, the second-highest retention in over 10 years (2024: 90%)

+ Delivered further value to partners through our “Building Success Together” programme, through inclusive tools and services such as:

Rightmove Hub for training and industry insights (with over 60,000 accounts now signed up);

 Rightmove Plus for business management (>25 enhancements/new features in 2025, and with 28 million sessions in the year, equivalent to every Estate Agency branch logging in on average 5 times per day); and

Tailored account management meetings (over 75,000 across the business)

 Sponsorship or collaboration with PropertyMark, Women in Estate Agency, and Agents Together in Estate Agency; the Home Builders Federation in New Homes, and the Association for Rental Living in Rental Operators

 

Strategic growth areas:

+ Commercial Property revenue grew 13% to £15.3m (2024: £13.5m), attracted over 275 (+29%) more partners, increasing membership to 1,227 (2024: 949), and achieved over 60% of online user time.  ARPA was £1,108 (2024: £1,260), reflecting the impact of lower ARPA partners joining

+ Rental Services revenue grew 35% to £7.1m (2024: £5.2m) due to growing take up of the Lead to Keys product and 17% growth in ancillary sales of utilities, broadband and insurance packages

+ Mortgages revenue increased by 46% year-on-year to £6.8m (2024: £4.7m), introducing £34bn of potential lending to our partners (2024: £24bn)

+ Together, these three areas contributed £29.1m in revenue, up 25% on 2024

 

Data and innovation to deliver value:

+ Rightmove says it benefits from 4 petabytes (PB) of historic and live data – all stored on its unified and cloud enabled data platform – with over 90% proprietary to Rightmove.  This data is processed by c.200 proprietary models to create differentiated outcomes to both consumers and partners

+ Highest ever delivery of technology releases from our product teams – more than 6,000 during the year – leveraging Rightmove’s data and technology, along with insights from c.20,000 minutes of user testing, over 85,000 surveys, and c.500,000 recorded web and app sessions

+ Examples of new products for partners included Online Agent Valuation and AI-enhanced Opportunity Manager for Estate Agents, Direct Appointment Booking for New Homes, a new data API and property details pages for Commercial partners, and upgrades to Rightmove Plus and the Rightmove Hub

+ Examples of new features for consumers included MyPlaces, Style with AI, AI Keywords within the app, a global-first Property Checker within Mortgages, and a Renters Checklist within MyRightmove

+A multi-year collaboration with Google Cloud enables Rightmove to lead digital innovation in the property ecosystem, leveraging its extensive datasets and accelerate products that deliver value to consumers and partners

 

Current end-market trends 

Property end-market trends remain supportive for our partners’ businesses.  Financial markets currently expect further cuts to the current Bank of England base rate of 3.75% by the end of 2026. The lowest 2-year fixed mortgage rate at 31 January 2026 stood at 3.45%, down 80bps year-on-year. 

In the sales sub-market, 1.2 million transactions completed in 2025 (in line with the long-run average and 10% higher year-on-year).  Following a subdued trend during the autumn due to the Budget, activity picked up again and agents are entering 2026 carrying the largest-ever pipeline of stock available for sale. New homes developments in the market remain at low historic levels due to softer build rates.

Within the lettings sub-market, supply and demand continue to rebalance to 10 enquiries per rental home, although enquiries per available property remain above pre-COVID levels at 6-7, and rent levels are seeing more modest growth (+1% in January 2026 compared to January 2025). 

 

Current trading

Rightmove has entered 2026 with strong momentum. Significant activity over the last two months included:

+ Online Agent Valuation becoming the fastest-growing new product released by Rightmove, ahead of previous launches of products such as Sold by Me, Native Search Adverts and Auto-Featured Property. This digital tool enables more interaction options for potential vendors and agents and will support ongoing upgrades to Optimiser Edge and incremental ARPA growth;

+ Our next phase of AI-enabled features for consumers, included the launch of conversational search live on our platform as part of plans to enable new forms of property search, leveraging Rightmove’s and Google Cloud’s capabilities towards a future AI-powered property marketplace;

 + The submission of an app within the ChatGPT ecosystem as we continue to explore within our mindset of “However you discover, we have you covered”;

+ A new partnership with NatWest, the UK’s leading mortgage provider through digital channels, to accelerate the digital mortgage journey on Rightmove; and,

+ The appointment of a flexible resourcing partnership for software development.  This will support business velocity to deliver our product development strategy, as well as capacity flexibility for the future.

With these initiatives and more, the Rightmove team has started 2026 with energy, momentum and ambition. 

 

Outlook

In line with our guidance set in November, we continue to expect 2026 revenue growth of 8-10%, underpinned by top package uptake across Agency (Optimiser Edge) and New Homes (Ascend), further product-led growth (including Online Agent Valuation) and continued progress within our strategic growth areas of Commercial Property, Mortgages and Rental Services, which we expect to grow by 20-30%. 

We expect year-on-year growth in the second half of 2026 to be stronger than the first half. First half growth is impacted by fewer developments coming into the year and the strong mortgage comparator last year.

We anticipate c.1% growth in membership and ARPA growth of £110-120 across Agency and New Homes.

As announced in November 2025, we are accelerating further our investment in innovation and value delivery for our consumers and partners across the Rightmove platform.  Reflecting this period of investment, we expect underlying operating profit growth of 3-5% in FY26, resulting in an underlying operating margin of 67%.  Underlying operating profit growth in later years is expected to be at higher levels, in line with the ambitions set in November.

We expect 2026 underlying basic earnings per share growth of at least 5%.

We are also pleased to announce restarting the share buyback programme, with £90m to be completed by 31 July 2026.  This will be funded by a combination of our opening surplus cash and cash generated from operations, with cash balances expected to be c.£20m at 30th June 2026.  

The strength of our business model, our clear strategy, and our innovation pace underpin the Board’s confidence in Rightmove’s outlook for 2026 and beyond.

 

Johan Svanstrom, CEO of Rightmove, said: “These strong business results demonstrate the high quality and sustained usage of the Rightmove platform in all property market cycles. We create value as a leading digital enabler of the property market, delivering that value through the high quality and trusted foundations of our business, underpinned by proprietary data and ongoing product innovation. In late 2025, we announced increased investment to further accelerate innovation and value generation.

“Building on several years of technology leadership and launching of AI powered solutions, we most recently complemented our broad product range with a conversational search tool, developed in collaboration with Google Cloud. Looking ahead, we will introduce a Rightmove app-in-GPT on OpenAI in the near future.

“We have entered 2026 with confidence in our performance, leading with valued and specialised services that scale and deliver strong returns. We continue to execute our strategy to develop the leading digital ecosystem for the entire home-moving experience, powered by exceptional data and network effects.”

The Company will present its results at a meeting today for analysts and investors at 9:30am, available online here:  https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/a6y38xmq. 

 

 

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5 Comments

  1. BEReal46

    Shock horror! Rightmove are doing alright.

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  2. BillyRay

    Co-star must be delighted. How’s that $1BN lawsuit coming on ??

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  3. Hendrix

    Rightmove continues to “milk it”.

    Yes several attempts by individual agents & small consortiums sadly failed (ie agents mutual) to respond & create a more user friendly realistic cost effective platform eventually never really got off the ground.

    Yes the likes of CoStar & others have very deep pockets to jump into the property agency network but my thoughts are these media outlets do not understand such a people business. Recently John Lewis Partnership pulled the plug on their development aspirations whilst having prime property & land locations, a trusted name – never really understood the business.

    One supposes that with the advent of AI looming will one benefit but there again the joy of talking to robots must be compelling for one to look forward.

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  4. watchdog13

    Surprise surprise, the Times tries to talk down what is an impressive set of results. Maybe the Murdochs will be back.
    The AI hype is immaterial to the basic facts that RM is a sound business, an easy to use portal and the go to source for buyers . Agents seem to be voting with their wallets ….to stay.

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  5. Robert_May

    Strong results, but worth examining the economics underneath them.

    Rightmove’s ARPA of £1,530 is a blended figure across 16,385 agency branches, approximately £25m per month flowing from agents to the portal. That average masks a significant imbalance. Around 20% of membership, corporates and non-geographic operators, are on substantially lower rates. The remaining 80% of predominantly independent branches are carrying a disproportionate share of that £25m.

    Those same independent agents had a very difficult 2025. HM Land Registry data for England and Wales shows average transaction prices fell from £367,000 to £353,000, a drop of £14,000 or 3.8%. Transaction volumes over the same period tracked below the 640,000 recorded during the 2008 financial crisis. Agents were completing fewer sales on lower value properties while absorbing a 6% subscription increase.

    An agent on a typical 1 to 1.25% fee on £353,000 earns roughly £3,500 to £4,400 per completed sale. Rightmove’s monthly subscription now represents the equivalent of between 6 and 8 completed transactions just to break even on portal costs before any other business expense.

    The structural issue is this. The 80% of independent agencies generating the majority of Rightmove’s listings and therefore the consumer traffic that underpins its entire value proposition are under sustained financial pressure. As smaller agents struggle or close, listings fall, traffic follows, and the margin model becomes harder to sustain.

    Then there is the AI question. Rightmove has announced a ChatGPT app submission, following a path Zillow has already taken in the US, positioning agent data as the fuel for LLM powered property search. Which raises a straightforward question every agent should be asking. Why would you pay £2,200 a month for your own listing data to power someone else’s AI partnership? The LLMs need property data. Agents have it. Infrastructure now exists that allows agents to supply that data directly to AI platforms for a fraction of the cost and retain the value themselves rather than funding a portal’s technology strategy.

    Rightmove’s short-term results are strong. But they are being built on an agency base that is earning less from fewer transactions and is now being asked to underwrite an AI pivot that primarily benefits the portal. That dependency is not visible in today’s numbers but it will be.

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