Almost half – 49% – of agents report that their advertising spend on Rightmove has gone up.

The figure compares with 27% who reported an increased spend on Zoopla, and 20% on OnTheMarket.

The revelation comes in a confidential report from a company called Third Bridge, whose research is aimed at private equity firms and hedge funds to help them understand investment opportunities, and which has now been seen by EYE.

Third Bridge compiled its findings after doing research among just 58 agents. Of these, 42 were Rightmove subscribers, 56 Zoopla subscribers and just seven OTM subscribers.

While the samples are small, the value is that Third Bridge delivers market intelligence on the property portals market quarter by quarter.

The latest report, dated May, covers the first quarter of this year.

It says of the Rightmove subscribers that “overall, respondents said annual price increases were the norm” but that in general they believed Rightmove had improved its site “and subsequently did not feel overly disappointed about the price hike”.

Of the 51% who had not had price rises in the first quarter of this year, “a few” had been told that prices would rise in the coming months.

Come the third quarter of this year, 69% of the Rightmove subscribers were expecting prices to go up and 49% of Zoopla subscribers were anticipating price rises.

OTM subscribers – bearing in mind that there were only seven in the sample – believed prices would either stay the same or go down in the first quarter of next year.

When it came to leads, Rightmove and Zoopla generated the same number in the first quarter of this year.

Each generated 41% of the leads delivered by websites to agents; unsurprisingly, given the tiny sample, OTM delivered 3%. However, agents’ own websites did not seem that effective, generating just 6% of leads.

The report says that while the quality of Zoopla leads seems to have improved, agents still generally prefer Rightmove.