Rightmove appears to have started notifying agents of price increases.
One two-branch agent has been told that from September 1, its monthly cost for one branch will increase from around £1,000 by over £200 – a 21% increase.
The rate for the second branch will go up from about £1,500 per month by around £100.
The agent said that they had cut the amount for one branch they had been paying last year to the basic package because of the “silly” increase Rightmove was trying to levy then.
In January, when the agent tried to cut the other branch to the same basic package, it was no longer available.
The latest notification letter this week says that despite housing market pressures, legislative changes and developments in agency practices, “some things remain unchanged”.
The letter goes on: “Demand for the right property at the right price continues to be robust and the underlying housing market fundamentals remain sound. That means that more than ever there is a need for quality leads and instruction opportunities.
“Looking at the time home movers spend on the main property portals, 74% is spent on Rightmove.”
The agent said: “I have sent them a strongly worded complaint, which will probably go nowhere except the delete basket.
“This is clearly the start of their increases this year. It’s such a shame that they can’t work with agents instead of pushing us away, and us ending up hating dealing with them.”
Comments (32)
If everyone left RM then all the online agents would suffer as ARM would have to increase their prices more and on liners can’t get on OTM. Happy Days!
These prices are starting to become a problem! Does anyone have any tops on how to utilise social media (facebook, twitter etc)?
Rory I saw something on LinkedIn the other week that looks promising and different to the current portals. I tried to find the article again but virtually impossible as not used to linkedin. I can’t remember the name but I do recall property platform in the article and something to do with social media. Maybe someone else knows what it is called.
These increases are unsustainable and it is time for change!
Left 18 months ago. Very happy to stay with Zoopla and OTM while it’s free, apologies to those paying. Spoke with a franchise guy locally and even with their discount he’s paying over £1000 a month. In the meantime another local indy has dropped them. They plainly consider themselves ‘worth it’ despite the current conditions in our industry. They are determined to get to £2500k a month and don’t seem to care how many agents they loose along the way. I certainly won’t be returning, Google and Facebook give better coverage anyway.
Just had our lovely letter from Rightmove fee going up from £1050 to £1220 plus vat for basic package. Onthemarket now wanting us to buy extra products, fairly cheap but still extra??? Zoopla only £80 plus vat a month. most leads we receive are from Rightmove but there is no need to charge as much as they do sooner we all switch to zoopla or onthemarket the better.
We cut back to the much cheaper basic package on Rightmove in January and haven’t seen any alteration to our traffic at all – I’d recommend doing that at the very least for anyone afraid their competitors will try and use their lack of presence on Rightmove against them. We’ve been saving £700 a month since.
See Property Pundit’s post above. We can control customer perception but until we engage in these steps we will keep going round in circles.
FYI, I left end of Feb.
It seems strange that a de facto monopoly is being permitted to form. Honestly their leads return less money for my business than leaflet drops and yet we all still use them because we all know that that’s where everyone checks.
Good old RM never learn never listen to their customer needs. They know the market is tight but still they squeeze Agents! We were paying £2750 over 2 branches Just cut it back to the bone, what they term essentials, hasnt had any impact on enquiries from RM but has saved us, Agree with some comments above we need to educate our clients about RM, we now only take information on vals for Zoopla, who by the way cut our fees when I had a chat with them!! They said the understood the market was tough and wanted to help. We dont get that with RM. So our next step is to stay on lower package with RM for a few more months while we re educate our customers and get the zoopla message out then it will be BYE BYE RM.
TBH it’s hard to have sympathy for Agents that moan about Rightmoves increases and do nothing year in year out we left December and we are just as busy and significantly better off. I have no idea why Agents don’t grow a pair and walk – This process of increase’s will just continue until agents go bust or see the light. The public will go to the sites with the properties be it On The Market Zoopla or any other alternative.
Come on Agents take the rope off your neck that’s slowly tightening and make the switch – you’ll wish did it years ago once you see needing Rightmove above anything else was just smoke and mirrors!!!
I ditched them in January. – saving 6k. Ive just started paying OnTheMarket, together with a combination of Zoopla / Facebook / Google marketing /news paper / other sourses – oh i firget to mention i have a high street shop for you know that thing convenience for clients. So far this week its OnTheMarket one sale. Most buyers are educated enough to download all the apps to their mobile / like your facebook page etc- so they get notificationa anyway. What we nedd to do is educate the seller- that Rightmove is not the Gods they like to think they are, squeezing ever tighter on those curly hairy things between your legs. Its about time you all grew a pair and sort them out for once and for all – go on get together and do it…
I ditched them in January. – saving 6k. Ive just started paying OnTheMarket, together with a combination of Zoopla / Facebook / Google marketing /news paper / other sourses – oh i forget to mention i have a high street shop,..for you know, that thing convenience for clients. So far this week its OnTheMarket one sale. Most buyers are educated enough to download all the apps to their mobile / like your facebook page etc- so they get notifications anyway, from all of them anyway. What we need to do is educate the seller- that Rightmove is not the Gods they like to think they are, squeezing ever tighter on those curly hairy things between your legs. Its about time you all grew a pair and sort them out for once and for all – go on get together and do it….
We ditched them in Feb and haven’t looked back…come on in the water’s lovely and warm in PCL without RM.
Posting this once again…………
Today’s action plan for agents:
1. Cancel your Rightmove subscription
2. If you’re not ready to give up Rightmove membership, only subscribe to the most basic package, ditch micro-sites, banners, featured agents and featured properties
3. If you’re not giving up RM membership just yet, remove all Rightmove stickers in your office, logos from stationery & web sites
4. If you share property details on social media, use links to your own website not to the portals
5. Upload your content to your own website first. Upload to the portals (if you must) a couple or a few days later.
6. Ensure you promote YOUR website FIRST, don’t give any portal traffic
7. Stress that people register their details with YOU rather than the portals. Remind them that property does sell ‘off market’ or without the need for a portal upload.
8. Make your feelings known to Rightmove. OK, they’ll probably ignore them but you never know
9. Finally, put the action plan together for when you finally give Rightmove the heave-ho
10. Don’t moan on industry forums about Rightmove fees if you’re not prepared to carry out any of the points above. TAKE BACK CONTROL.
I remember back in the day when Rightmove came to us cap in hand begging for us to use their portal, now they are a beast that wishes to devour, they are greedy and have forgotten their roots.
They are NOTHING without our stock, we came off 5 years ago and use OnTheMarket.com and Zoopla, we still list and sell and rent, we make a decent living WITHOUT them in an area where agents are AFRAID to come off, WHY???? If everyone leaves then you all work on an even playing field.
Don’t moan about it, do something about it like we did, otherwise just shut up and keep giving them your hard earned cash, its your choice.
Is anybody going to lead us out of the darkness….what should we be paying, I reckon £500 tops….anybody in South Manchester / Cheshire interested in working together ?
Only you can do that…it’s akin to hostage situation that many agents willingly continue to be held captive by…serve your notice, you won’t look back…
(P.s.I assure you that it wasn’t easy convincing my teams and my clients that it was in their best interests- indeed RMs “hype” machine is surely a shrewd and effective one…but the proof of the pudding is in the eating…and I didn’t like RM’s pudding…poorly served and unnecessarily calorific…
I think it might be the final push I need … thankyou
when I said ‘working together’ I meant to say working together against Rightmove …just to be a bit clearer
…Agents used to work together very effectively (portal related or not) 😉
yes I’ve had a few more glimmers of that recently…even had a proper joint agency with an increased fee and split properly with no falling out…perhaps in tougher times agents can work together !!
Absolutely amazing…an almost £5000 p/a increase across two branches… Dont get mad- ditch them!
RM has taken on the form of a destructive addiction and agents need to kick the habit…
We’re with OTM and Zoopla, and we’re a Lettings only business (I can’t speak for sales based performance)…
Let me help you out a little…
It should be of some use to know- I took the decision to leave RM some three months ago…the last two of those months have been our best performing in the last 18 months…
My staff aren’t wasting time with “ghost” applicants and yes- volume of enquiries are down, but quality is up, and this is what I’m interested in…
volume means nothing if they aren’t converted into deals!
RM’s veneer is most definitely just that…a veneer.
Believe in yourself, your business and your teams, and save yourself from “Rightmoveissary”..
Have a successful day!
Correction (as a result of initially speed reading the article!)- An almost £5000 increase, should of course be £3600…
whilst we are stuck with a corporate agreement which is heavily discounted we still pay over £1100 pm ( sales and lettings combined) however if this was my business i would have ditched RM a couple of years ago and i would tell our rep that if i ever saw one or spoke with one…!! statistically its the quality of the leads that count not the quantity RM send just over double the amount of leads of the other two portals however the leads from the other two ZOOP and OTM convert to tripple the banked business of RM leads, we rarerly recieve any Landlord or Vendor leads from RM compared to the other two , RM seem hell bent on continuing to tell everyone how many viewer leads they send , but the business is founded on vendors and landlords, tenants and buyers will always come if you have stock RM do not provide stock unlike the other two.
RM continually bights the hand that feeds it treats its customers with complete contempt and trys to justify each rise with bullshit statistics we are all in a way to blame as an industry because were all scared of losing out read some of the post where people have ditched RM their buisness levels have not diminished ,
The drug dealer will alway create a market first then start to increase the price of their product because they know people cant live without it , but as an industry we can live without it.
Just had a 10% increase after last year’s 25%. The platform is unchanged and as a consequence of lower volumes the cost per lead is dramatically higher.
Rightmove asking for a 3 course meal from the food bank again.
God help them should they ever have meaningful competition. We won’t forget
If everyone left them, they wouild have no stock and therefore they are no threat, just a name, the public would quickly latch onto the next site, indeed we left 5 years ago and our buisness is thriving withoout them, hell im thousands better off before i start because i dont have to pay them!!
Exactly what many agents have done and found to their relief.
There IS meaningful competition. We get just as many offers through OnTheMarket as we do from Rightmove.
Rightmove could double prices and still idiot agents would stay, some are even posting RM property links on Facebook instead of promoting their own site. Muppets.
it would help if onthemarket got inthemarket by being a selection in the boost choice of demographic for Facebook. I wonder if Facebook has taken the two portal rule or onthemarket are just behind the curve in this market?
Price has reached the cap on the road and the area!!! Time to move on if you already haven’t.