In 2011, Netflix had an existential problem.

The company’s entire business was built on other people’s content. Studios licensed their films and TV shows to Netflix cheaply, customers streamed them happily, and everyone got along just fine. Then the studios looked at the numbers, looked at each other, and thought: why are we giving this away?

Starz pulled over a thousand titles overnight, Disney walked away, and Sony followed. One by one, the foundations of Netflix’s business were yanked out from underneath it.

Netflix’s response was to bet $100 million on a political drama called House of Cards, its first original series. The company had never made a minute of television in its life.

It was, by any reasonable measure, a reckless gamble, but it worked. House of Cards triggered a 22% surge in US subscribers, the stock price tripled in a year, and Netflix went from a company worth $5.7 billion to one now valued at several hundred billion, producing more original content than any traditional studio. Losing its crutch didn’t kill Netflix; it forced the company to become something far more powerful than a distributor of other people’s work.

Now. Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine that tomorrow morning, you wake up, make a cup of tea, open your laptop… and Rightmove has gone.

That’s right, a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world in which every listing, every lead, every Rightmove Plus report has vanished off the face of the earth.

What would you do?

The crutch we all lean on

This isn’t another “do we really need Rightmove?” column. The debate about Rightmove’s grip on the industry has raged for longer than a Last of the Summer Wine box set.

Rightmove commands over 80% of all time spent on UK property portals. It claims responsibility for over seven in ten vendor instructions and eight in ten lettings instructions. The average estate agency branch is handing Rightmove north of £1,500 a month. Its platform saw 2.3 billion visits and 16.4 billion minutes of browsing in 2024 alone. It has been called, with some justification, “the Google of the UK property market.”

And like Google, it has become so embedded in consumer behaviour that most agents feel they simply cannot operate without it – which as a tendency to blind us to the opportunities that lie away from the portals.

Which is precisely why this thought experiment is so valuable.

A post-Rightmove world

So: Rightmove has vanished. There’s no portal to upload your listings to, no auto-generated email alerts pinging out to registered buyers, no Rightmove Plus to check your market share against the competition.

The first few days would be panic – black armbands and a minute’s silence. But what happens after that is where it gets interesting, because agents would have no choice but to rediscover the art of actually selling property.

Think about what you’d do differently.

You’d build a local audience. Without Rightmove funnelling buyers to you, you’d need to attract them yourself. Your social media would stop being an afterthought and start being a genuine marketing channel. Your email database (the one you’ve been meaning to clean up for three years) would suddenly become your most valuable asset. You’d invest in content that makes people want to follow you, not just scroll past you.

You’d get creative with marketing. Every new instruction would demand imagination. You’d think about who the ideal buyer actually is and how to reach them specifically. You might target Facebook groups for local parents if you’re selling a family home. You might partner with a relocation company. You might film a property video that people actually want to share.

You’d become a genuine local expert. Not saying you’re a local expert, but showing it. You’d know the community, sponsor the events, write for the local paper, knock on doors, build relationships with solicitors and mortgage brokers and removal companies. Your presence would be felt in the town, not just on a portal.

You’d nurture your database like your business depends on it. Because it would! Every past buyer, every vendor who didn’t instruct, every landlord who went elsewhere… they’d all matter. You’d follow up, stay in touch, add value between transactions. You’d build a pipeline that doesn’t evaporate the moment a sale completes.

You’d work harder to win referrals. If a portal isn’t delivering you warm leads on a plate, the quality of your service becomes everything. You’d go above and beyond not because it’s nice, but because it’s necessary. Every completion would be a marketing opportunity. Every happy client would be a walking, talking advert for your business.

The Netflix lesson

When the studios pulled their content from Netflix, the obvious response was to panic, scramble for replacement licences, and try to rebuild the same model. Instead, Netflix asked a more interesting question: what if we don’t need them at all?

That question changed everything. It forced Netflix to develop capabilities it never would have built while it had easy access to other people’s content.

And that’s the real point of this thought experiment.

Because everything in that post-Rightmove world – the creative marketing, the audience-building, the local presence, the database nurturing, the referral culture – you could be doing right now. Today. With Rightmove still very much alive.

Wherever you stand on the Rightmove debate, the fact remains that there are a multitude of opportunities to sell homes and grow your business’s reputation that lie outside of the portals.

Try this on Monday morning

Here’s a challenge. The next time your team has a new instruction, gather everyone together and say this:

“Rightmove has vanished off the face of the earth. So… how are we going to sell this property?”

Watch what happens. Watch the creativity that emerges when the safety net is removed. Watch the ideas that surface when people can’t default to “upload it and wait.” Watch your team start thinking like innovators rather than administrators.

You might suggest targeting the listing to specific buyer profiles on social media. Someone might propose a partnership with a local business to cross-promote. Another might suggest a launch event, a video campaign, a door-knock of the surrounding streets, a direct approach to buyers on your database who’ve told you exactly what they’re looking for.

Some of those ideas will be brilliant. Some will be terrible. But imagine the increased value to your customers if you cherry-picked the best ones – and listed on Rightmove.

Toby Martin is an industry consultant, trainer, and speaker