Rightmove is set to grow its team of account managers by a quarter to further increase the level of service for agents.
Rightmove says that the recruitment drive comes alongside ongoing innovation for agents to help them win more instructions, prioritise the hottest leads and help with efficiencies in the current busy market.
In a sign that more stock is coming on to the market Rightmove says that it saw the number of valuation leads sent to agents jump by 20% over the past week, with demand from prospective buyers up by 80% on the same week in 2019, while rental demand is up by 53%.
Rightmove’s agency director Dave Anderson said: “We want to increase the level of help and support for agents to make sure they’re making the most of all of the tools that are included in their membership, to take advantage of the current market conditions. As well as our most popular tools like the Best Price Guide and market share reports, a number of agents are also using more recent innovations such as Viewings Manager, an appointment booking tool which is also included in their membership, to cut down on tenant no-shows.
“Other agents are demonstrating their SSTC successes by using our Sold by Me product to target prospective sellers within property search. We need to make sure agents are getting more of our time so they’re aware of everything available to them that could help them grow their market share further in their local area, and also see if we can help their teams cut down on admin so they can focus more on building up their pipeline.”
Is this Rightmove beginning to understand one of their vulnerabilities and attempting make amends? A mismatch bunch of flowers from the all night petrol station and a box of Milk Tray?
I’m not sure trying to reinforce portal centricity with a few tools that clearly indicate the vulnerability of the model is the way to go. This is effectively admitting that without agents going out and winning instructions the portal house of cards begins to wobble.
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Interesting that their 10% increase in annual subscriptions has been brushed under the carpet.
An ageing business that seems to be behind the curve on so many recent innovations, yet still pushes price rises……
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In fairness a 10% increase in subscriptions isn’t something any agent can moan about when the transaction price index has also risen by 10%. The problem is when prices fall back, transactions slow or stock levels drop.
I’m not sure anyone has thought about this very carefully and whoever it is will hate me pointing it out but any collective innovation introduced by a portal benefits one agent to the detriment of its other customers on the same patch. This is trying to make sure one of their agents wins the instruction with no regard for the others.
Portals don’t need to worry about competition from other portals but they do need to worry about service suppliers who give individual advantage to individual agents. If those agents are winning instructions during a listings drought, serious applicants will bypass the portals ad go straight to the agent.
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You make a good point, but a long overdue spike in the market does not absolve them from being the one industry supplier that lifts its fees annually by a greater % than any other.
RM have always offered a limited number of spaces for agents to fight over such tools as valuation boosters etc…
They would be more likely to win the hearts and minds of their agent clients if such tools were built in as standard… then again they are in business to leverage their clients for the benefit of their shareholders…
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Robert
Why cant a 10% price increase be moaned about, even if sale prices have gone up, when you are starting from such a high level in the first place?
The flannel and dressing needs to be cut away …..
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Alright they can be moaned about, I only said that to make a further point that if you’re an agent who is pay £233 a month the price rise is £23 a month but of you’re a small agent subsidising that discounted rate for a select few and paying £2000 a month already your 10% is worth £200.
it is the inequity, the bias toward economies of scale agents that is the real issue that needs addressing.
One of the problems the portals , not just Rightmove need to consider is that about 96% of their reveunue comes from the small and medium size agents they’re abusing the most. Driving the profit generators out of business to favour a few larger agencies is a strategy that could backfire in spectacular fashion when small agents unable to pay £2000 to list nothing at all, go out of business and leave a big hole in the portals turnover and profits
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I agree with what you say but Im sure Rightmove know how many properties any particular agency has sold and completed in a time period and this forms part of your increase calculation. I may be wrong but Id be very surprised if I was…. they have all the information they need at their fingertips to do it.
They dont know your costs but they certainly have a good idea what your sales revenue was ….they can target the increase accordingly. Since agents arent allowed to talk openly about RM pricing for fear of upsetting the CMA who is ever going to know?
Its a lonely world negotiating with RM…. planet CMA is the other side of the galaxy…whats 10-15% a year…
On the other hand their initial pandemic stance last year was definitely a case of driving the profit generators out of business so who knows…
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The CMA sanctioned a duopoly that has allowed Rightmove to increase subscriptions 8% more than RPI since they allowed 4 portals to become 3 controlled by 2 companies
I posted my prediction that Rightmoves’s subscription would rise to over £1000 per branch when the merger of ZPG and DMGT was first announced, I wasn’t wrong
I’m always happy to have a chat about points you can raise with your rep so it’s not as lonely as you think.
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And who exactly are the bigger players that will profit from less competing agents? The maths has been telling them they can squeeze the agents for all their worth and pick-up the business from those that fall out. Been going on for nearly 20 years, its not just guess work, all calculated.
The only way RM will change is if a big player or two drops out. One can dream.
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They can make as many announcements as they like, but nothing will change my mind they are just an awful company
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Having thought about this, I suspect this is what they decided was the best thing to do with feedback from the market research they did of their ‘customers’….. Again they have totally mis read what they were no doubt told which I think was probably along the lines of ‘nobody actually likes you’. I know when questioned I told them exactly what I thought of them, basically running no more than ‘ protection racket ‘, I don’t think I could spit the venom out with any more anger. Hopefully at sometime in the distant future they will just become a bad memory.
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It won’t change anything, their account managers are not about helping the agents, they’re all about increasing spend.
If there are issues with agents misleading consumers or breaching their regulations they can take weeks to get things sorted and I’m sure that will continue because it doesn’t generally make them any money.
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They have such a high churn in account managers these are probably only replacing those that have left in the past few years.
Anyway they are NOT account managers they are sales people, all they will do is try and upsell packages that most agents have now realised are pointless and have a basic only package.
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Over 20 years I have seen so many rightmove reps come and go, they all arrive fired up believing in their products and singing the company song but quickly either away. I’ve found that when pushed, especially about pricing structures they really don’t believe in it themselves. I’ve stopped talking to them as soon as I hear ” I’m your new account manager ” as I know all they have been briefed to do is increase my spend using smoke and mirrors.
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Any fool will believe the recruitment drive is for the benefit of agents… when the likely hood is it’s to replace those Rightmove let go in the mist of the pandemic.. “it’s now time to replace” in actual fact it’s so RM can spend more time influencing agents to spend more..
we all know Rightmove can’t hold down their staff & retention rates are through the floor..
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