In a statement to the City this morning Rightmove has announced an extended period of discounting for its member agents
It said:
To support our customers through the unprecedented shut down of the UK property market due to Covid-19 we offered all our Agency and New Homes customers a 75% discount between April and July.
The government advised on 13 May that agents and new homes developers could reopen in England.
Despite the positive consumer reaction to the re-opening of the housing market, it takes three months on average for housing transactions to complete which impacts the cash flows of our agents. It will also take time for agents to build a pipeline of vendors and new sales instructions.
Given this, we have today communicated our continued support to our Agency customers in England by offering a 60% discount for August and 40% for September.
The property market in Wales started to reopen on 22 June and Scotland is set to reopen on 29 June and we will continue to support customers in these markets with a 75% discount for August and 60% for September.
The financial impact of this extended support over August and September will result in a reduction in revenue of £17m-£20m, in addition to the £65m-75m revenue impact of the discount for the period April to July.
The portal has also acknowledged a drop in membership.
Since the beginning of the year we have seen a decline in our membership base, principally from lower stock Agency customers experiencing cash flow issues, exacerbated by the severe financial shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a reduction in the stock-based-branch-equivalent-measure of hybrid agents.
Overall membership at 31 May of 19,054 is down 3.8% since the end of 2019.
This decline is made up of 620 fewer agency branches, together with a reduction of 135 New Homes developments.
Traditional agents have thus far generally proven to be resilient, with the number of traditional agency members only falling by around 2% since the start of the year.
Of the 620 fewer agency branches just over half are traditional agency branches with the balance being stock-based virtual branches from hybrid agencies.
Rightmove’s position as the place home hunters turn to first continues unabated with the market share of time spent according to Comscore unchanged in May at over 85%.
Rightmove now has over 50% more available stock listed for sale in the UK than anywhere else.
Comments (24)
We are London based, left in March 2020. Not solely because of Covid -19, however, that was the final push I needed. Financially, we could have rode out the storm without leaving but we were paying £5000 for two offices and I genuinely believe the money could be spent better elsewhere.
Since Lockdown was lifted we have listed 7 properties and have 5 under offer so far. Only 1 Valuation lost because we are not on Rightmove. We might face more, but so be it.
Our ROI from Rightmove was pretty poor. Listing opportunities they claim to have introduced to us were already ours and the numbers for us just didn’t add up.
Same.
Decent property gets a decent response from OTM and now zoopla too.
Its a waste of money being on every portal.
We took the money from RM and are spending it on Social Media, promoting our own brand. Which is a far better use of cash in the long run.
”Since the beginning of the year we have seen a decline in our membership base, principally from lower stock Agency customers experiencing cash flow issues, exacerbated by the severe financial shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a reduction in the stock-based-branch-equivalent-measure of hybrid agents.”
It is commentary like this from RM, that does make you wonder whether these press releases are written by a 12 year old, who’s realized that many of the other kids don’t really want to be in his ‘gang’ anymore…but he’s trying to put a brave face on it (eye-roll).
Translation…”They’ve left, but they were all rubbish, and we don’t need them anyway…”
We left…we aren’t a ”lower stock Agency” (did they mean ”Lowestoft”?)…however we ARE experiencing cash flow issues, in the sense that since leaving RM…we’ve got a lot more cash flow!
Just in case anyone has yet to work this out:
From 1st August, your Rightmove fees are going up by 60%, 120 times the current rate of inflation
From 1st September, your Rightmove fees will go up by a further 50%
An overall increase over 2 months of 140%
But hey, they’re doing you all a favour, right?
Someone get that man a calculator!
To be fair Property Pundits calculations are correct. If something cost 100 then 60% increase would bring it to 160. Further 50% increase (from 160) would make it 240. I’ll leave you to workout % increase from 100 to 240…
Are you so stupid I need to show working out?
I had an email from Gap last week offering a 60% discount on everything and then I had one this morning offering a 50% discount on everything, I mean that’s just the most outrageous thing I’ve ever seen, I think that’s a 60% increase!! I’ll never go to Gap again!!!
#SayNoToGap
#sayyestomathslessons
I’m looking at it in a different way, we are the dominant agent on our patch ( more sales this year than no’s 2 & 3 combined, couple of hundred under management, boards everywhere, sponsored roundabouts et al, 20+ year legacy etc ) and I think not being on Rightmove could be a marketing positive, admittedly coming from a position of strength, off the top of my head the sales pitch would be:
We were Rightmove subscribers from day 1, since then things have moved on and we just got fed up with the number of timewasters and dreamers wasting our clients time, sometimes exclusivity which requires the serious buyer to seek us out cuts through the chaff, google us and we’re there position one, generic patch search we’re there position one ( after the sponsored tw@ts ) we are on OTM, Zoopla, Homesearch, onedome, facebook, R4 if Robert pulls his finger out, sitting there on Rightmove with all the corporate cr@p driven by hope value targets became a problem, so we’ve transitioned with no lack of reach and our figures back it up.
Lot of reps, shills, naysayers and cynics.
Just need to persuade my 2 fellow directors 🙂
Good line htsnom. Another one to seriously consider Is that in the same way holiday hunters don’t just look at First Choice, they look at all the holiday sites to find the place they want to stay in, even the obscure ones. So it follows with serious house hunters, with such a limited choice right now, they’re almost sure to search on Z, OTM and others in their ascendancy like One Dome. In a south west town of 18 hungry agents, mine was the first to quit. Intelligence suggests that virtually all the rest would like to but like the well intended, but jelly kneed Say No …. group, they’re sitting on the fence waiting to see the effect on those who’ve had the balls to leave. Come on Rob Sargent and Co, surely they’ve pushed you to the limit now – JUMP!!
As soon as Zoopla launched, Rightmove lost its USP of being the only place people can look. This was the only USP worth having, it’s not coming back. Time to move on.
If RM lose another 360 EA branches in June, that will equal the number for the whole of 2019 (and would mean a loss of 6%) in just six months.
Clearly they are not going to let that happen, hence the move today.
Also, they do not yet have a new FD (hardly surprising !) and are just trying to stop the wheels falling off until they can find someone to pick up the poisoned chalice.
And now OTM have played theirs…
Just in….
I am very pleased to announce an extension to the payment support initiative for our agent customers to help ease the cash flow pressure which you are continuing to face.
On 19 March 2020, we announced a 3 month, 33% monthly listing fee discount to assist our agent customers who were facing the evolving COVID-19 situation. The initial discount period was due to expire on 25 July 2020.
We are now extending listing fee discounts for a further 2 months to 25 September 2020. The discount will remain at 33% for the first month and will be 20% for the second month.
These discounts will be given to all OnTheMarket agent customers who are paying on full-tariff listing agreements
Property Poke in the Eye. Just because Say No to Rightmove exists and memberships are dropping doesn’t mean the two are linked. Say No to Rightmove can’t even persuade the man who started Say No to Rightmove to leave Rightmove. Think about that for a moment. Rob Sargant must find it hilarious that so many agents are following his every instruction whilst he has used Rightmove over the last couple of decades to become rich. Think about how ridiculous it looks for members of Say No to Rightmove to publicly instruct agents to leave the membership of a platform which has given a total of 65% discount for five months with no conditions whatsoever when that platform is the only place that the public want their property marketed on. I’m not complaining in the slightest because giving all of our clients over the next five months a 65% discount has not even crossed my mind. Has it crossed yours?
Well said Jerry.
One of the individuals who revels in the nickname they were given (four horseman) actually said to me on a twitter post its thanks to him we have the RM discount! Deluded is an understatement.
And NONE of the group ‘leaders’ have left RM and i very much doubt will. A lot of hot air (and rm know it).
Sargents plan of leaving RM and supporting OTM and Z must have taken a load of thought. Even he is not prepared to do it. What happens after September? Will be the same people moaning, RM will continue to shaft us. Until another advertising medium comes along like what broke the newspapers stranglehold on our industry, nothing will change.
The share price is tumbling ……… good
Down nearly 5% at the moment.
Why am I not surprised at Rightmove’s offensive PR effort to disguise Agents reasons for leaving ……because they are sick & tired of Rightmove’s overpriced, tired offering, shockingly poor service, dictatorial attitude …..and its belated “discount” which Agents drove it to reluctantly offer
…..and finally, Rightmove’s latest announcement shows how out of touch Rightmove are with Our Industry ….another mis-managed announcement promoting variable discounts to Agents which once again demonstrates their selective ignorance.
Rightmove once again excel at confirming how toxic they are with their latest “PR” offering …..more thorns dressed up as a “helping hand”.
Decent offering to be fair… the market will not produce anything to write home about for a good while yet and all the egomaniac agents that tell you (and their deluded selves) that the market is on fire …get real people …Fantasists at best … clueless muppets at worst.
Hope I am way off the mark but in the apocalyptic world after Bounce back, furlough, zoom and suntans we will face depleted pipelines, bills that are going to be back on the matt come October and we are going to have to deal with a few tricky situations without the bank balances to pay our way out of it..
These reductions in subscription fees (IMO) will need to be extended into the new year and will will give a short reprieve to the “say no to right move campaign”… is it still going (great idea but losing momentum daily, and it was on day 2 after inception) and a platform for the likes of Christopher Watkin.
Keeping the faith me and I will be “shoulder to the wheel” and every other proverb Chinese or otherwise, but the reality is that the winter could prove to be one of discontent which unless tackled with thought could lead to the demise of quite a few agents, deluded or forthright.
See you down the front
Mark W Harris – Ramsey Moore
“Memberships are dropping”- the Leave Rightmove Campaign is working.
If you haven’t done already give notice in. It takes 2 months for the notice to kick in!!
Cancel by end of this month and you’ll be off before the increased fees come in.
“Since the beginning of the year we have seen a decline in our membership base, principally from lower stock Agency customers experiencing cash flow issues, exacerbated by the severe financial shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a reduction in the stock-based-branch-equivalent-measure of hybrid agents.”
Eh? Agents have found Covid-19 more understanding and empathetic than Rightmove. The virus wasn’t the cause for lost custom, you were. Jees.
Just looked at Rightmove on a site called waybackmachine, looks the same as 10 years ago. Only change is the featured rubbish.