Given that online property portals, dominated by a handful of websites, are by far the most popular home search method, it is perhaps unsurprising that a number of agents are spending significantly more money on maintaining an online presence that goes beyond simply listing properties on their own website.
Rightmove remains the most visited UK property portal, while Zoopla, part of ZPG, has ambitious plans for future growth.
With the world of property marketing changing fast and the digital marketing landscape evolving, agents have had little alternative but to alter the way they market their properties and that has meant a need to list properties on the major portals. But that has come at a cost over the years as listing fees have increased sharply.
When a sales representative from Rightmove approached a well-established London agent this week and asked for a 10% increase in their yearly tariff, the agent was shocked at what she described as “the cheek” of this proposal.
But despite expressing her displeasure the agent, who has asked to remain unnamed, reluctantly agreed to pay the increased amount.
A spokesperson for Rightmove told EYE yesterday: “We can confirm that we’re having conversations with some agents where their contracts are due for renewal.”
Some market analysts believe that Rightmove, one of the most profitable and highest ranked websites in the UK by visitor traffic, has benefitted from the war of the online property portals over the past few years, helping it to generate a high number of monthly leads for agents.
The portal says it recorded its busiest ever January, with over 211 million visits to the site last month and 7% more buyers contacting estate agents via Rightmove than in January 2020.
Rightmove puts agents’ brand and properties in front of the biggest home-hunting audience in the UK, helping to offer firms a competitive edge in their local market, but is the latest fee hike justified?
Rightmove defended the price increases and said it was changing its packages.
The Rightmove spokesperson commented: “Over the past year we’ve been working on a number of innovations to help agents for the long term.
“These include online viewing – over 10,000 branches have used the online viewing feature since it was launched. Agents can use it to automatically deliver online viewings and track interactions to help them prioritise the hottest leads for physical viewings.
“Local Market Indicator – this is a self-serve weekly data insight on sales and lettings search behaviour in an agent’s local area, which has been viewed over 28,000 times since May
“New Property Details Page – the overhaul of the page is out-performing the old page for time spent, properties shared and leads sent to agents.
“Viewings Manager – this is currently being rolled out for rental properties to help agents book and manage viewings with tenants – one of the agents trialing the new Viewings Manager has shared that the new online booking feature has cut their no-shows in half.
“Webinars and the Rightmove Hub – 30,000 agents attended 88 live webinars in 2020 and looked at over 1 million pages of content covering everything from dealing with Covid, legislation changes and market updates, and the extensive programme will continue in 2021.”
Fools and their money are soon parted.
Leaving RM two years ago was possibly our best business decision. Never looked back
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What happened to the discounts – have they expired?
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Sounds like they were lucky to get away with 10% – I’ve spoken to 3 agents this week who have had 20% price hikes!!
This is going too far and will break many of the already struggling agents.
Is it not time the monopolies commission actually did something?
if there was ever a case of exercising too much power surely this is it?
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The only monopoly is the self-imposed one created by agents themselves – that puts Rightmove on some sort of sacred ‘ooh we dare not leave’ pedestal.
With Zoopla and On The Market available as viable alternatives there is not the slightest chance of the authorities considering RM a monopoly.
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Possibly OTM and a few of the new ones just not bloomin imho
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There’s still that big fallacy doing the rounds that “the more people who see the listing the greater the chance of selling for a premium price.” That’s why Rightmove continue to flog the eyeballs pitch.
Agents need the right buyer, not the most buyers to see their listing. That requires of them to be more visible and to not rely on this money-grabbing extravagance.
It’s hard to say goodbye, if agents won’t leave.
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The annual slap in the face, disguised as “you need this, it will be good for you” is back !
Oh! how we’ve missed these jokers.
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The more agents that get behind OTM the better. Don’t dilute the situation by listing with Zoopla.
When talking about portals, always mention “onthemarket and the other portals..” delete RM from your mindset.
By far the most important, list ALL properties 48hrs “new and exclusive”
OTM has done very well in London (adverts on buses, tubes etc) and because of this the top end London leads all come via OTM.
I’m waiting for my RM rep to call…
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Wishful thinking. OTM deliver less than 5% of the leads Rightmove or Zoopla deliver, the quality is shocking! I say this as a founding member of OTM, I put my money where my mouth was, more than I can say for a lot of people preaching the OTM pitch! Sadly OTM then went to war with the founder agents who were screwed and should have been looked after.
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£100 to £140 a month as a baseline increase in the Rightmove charges per branch. If you you do the mathematics is taking an average £120 x 12 = £1,440 year. If there are 18,500 branches that is £1,440 x 18,500 = 26.6M. I am sure some corporates and larger agencies may not get hit with such large increases, but the 75% discount for four months in lockdown 1.0, thought to have cost Rightmove shareholders 30M, will soon see its ‘debt’ repaid and some. In the years 2016 to 2019, Rightmove’s gross profit was 74% each of those years, and in each of those years its revenue increased significantly. The only way your revenue rises if you have no new clients as you are at saturation point – annually increase fees to your clients. SaaS a repeatable model, does not cost a fraction of what agents are being charged, the mythical high cost of hosting 300 properties instead of 30, is just that, maybe ask your Rightmove rep the ‘true’ cost of hosting your inventory, bearing in mind that new portals allow a freemium model often for one or two years, why – it is cheap as chips. Time for agents to get savvy and pay a fee based on ROI, and not on the need to see a 74% gross profit, the only ones doing ok here are the shareholders, which of course includes those in the c-suite of Rightmove itself. What are the gross profit margins of the client agents? And how are they being treated?
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Nobody likes a price raise, but argh (hard hat on) they do what the public seem to want better than the others. (if you are reading this I actually dared press post comment)
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You need one buyer to sell a house and two to make a market . I suspect the traffic has increased markedly during lockdown in winter where many have too much time on their hands . The majority of those views being undertaken by those who have no intention of buying or indeed selling
This no doubt the same for its competitors .
Many views just curious to see if former properties they have lived in look like today and , checking current market values
It certainly hasn’t produced an increase in instructions where CWD for example currently have 14,143 for sale with over 21k on their books last November
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Hate to be a pedant but the article says an uplift in buyers contacting agents via rightmove rather than just an uplift in vists. Granted they may all still be a waste of time but it is a subtle difference and if you are glass half full like me then it means that this year may not be the right off the doom mongers are predicting.
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The beauty is RM have got themselves in a bind.
As members leave at a rate of 6% + every year, they are forced to raise fees by 10% and more each year to maintain their eye-watering profitability.
The business model is not sustainable, as leavers will join OTM (or Z) who then gain market share and profitability at RM’s expense.
OTM(or Z) could absorb the leavers without imposing their own price increases and turn the screw even more.
RM results are due at the end of the month. They should show that over 2,000 EA branches have left in 2019 & 2020.
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211 million visits and the lowest number of new instructions in memory. We found lead numbers no better than Z at half the price and rarely come across those that just use RM, although there are some. The problem is the public’s perception of whether RM is vital to sell their home. It isn’t, but it’s a perception. Until agents stop sticking portal branding all over their offices and in the worst cases tell the public to keep an eye on it as they list all their stock there, this problem won’t go away.
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All I can say is I am delighted I left them in March 2020, Yes I lost a few isntructions buy by not paying thier eye watering fees my profabality was actualluy better. “Read em and weep” agents who pay their fees.
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If only your spelling was as good as your profabality Trisha!
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Hi Trisha H,
My boss also took us off Rightmove last March and, we have seen no downturn at all. We just started talking more about our own site, directing people there and less about the portals. I can honestly say we lost no instructions, and have not sold any less in the 12 month period, if anything.. we have sold more (and yes, I know this could be down to the “stamp duty” market).
It may not work for some, but it has for us and I have a very happy boss that has not spent £££’s with them for almost a year now.
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We are Lettings only and don’t advertise with Rightmove but only with OTM. The leads from OTM are excellent for lettings and often come thorough within an hour of a property going live. Last year a landlord decided to instruct another Agent for one of their properties as they needed “more exposure” for it by being with an Agent who was on Rightmove – 6 weeks later the property was still unlet by the new Agent ! Speaks for itself – don’t believe the hype.
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Will RM price hikes ever NOT be a story? In that vein, we should have articles like ‘Holy Cow- It’s Christmas!’ and @Easter! Again!? Who knew?’
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What’s this I see adjacent the comments section? Oh it’s an advert for Zoopla, a company crow-barred in to an article about Rightmove and by the fifth line too. Pretty sure it’s just a coincidence.
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what’s the view in the community about Zoopla giving some agent an advantage by using them as a test bed?
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“Sleeping with the enemy is better than sleeping with an envious friend” AMMU
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My view is Zoopla are possibly worse. They are owned by Silverlake who own Zillow in US (who are absolutely hated by agents over there). Zoopla already own a lot of the software we use in UK they have more control over our data than any other portal. Tread carefully here. If you are one of the agents whose system was taken over by Zoopla then think about this, they have access to ALL your data now and not just what is available to the public on their portal. Bear in mind too that Silverlake spent millions acquiring Zoopla, then further millions on these recent innovations. So, once they get those lambs to slaughter in (and lock them in) it will be much worse than RM now. We all need to take a step back and see what is actually going on here and make some hard decisions about where we spend our money, who we can and can’t trust. What has happened to the sntr campaign?
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‘We all need to take a step back and see what is actually going on here and make some hard decisions about where we spend our money, who we can and can’t trust.’
Amen to that. Agents are the slaves in the data mine; a mine they should be owning and controlling themselves. Only thing stopping this is lack of trust between agents. Boy do these companies exploit this!
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As far as I’m aware Zillow are publicly listed. If Silverlake have any stock then it’s less than 1%
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Like hearing the first cuckoo of Spring, this is the first discussion of Spring on Rightmove price rises.
Cue the usual “We left and have done better” comments versus the “We cannot leave because everyone else is on RM”.
The answer is in the hands of agents, put up or shut up. You make RM what it is, renove your properties and they have nothing to offer the public. It’s like seeing children at the water’s edge on the beach, all waiting for the first one to dip their toes in and proclaim it’s freezing before they are all swimming around.
There is a world outside RM – come on in, the eater’s fine.
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We operate in an industry where you can be your city or town’s biggest, best known, most well-reviewed agent BUT the moment you drop Rightmove, instead of following suit (why wouldn’t you follow the market-leader?), the competition dive on this and make out you don’t know what you’re doing. Utter madness.
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There is no honour amongst the dishonourable (or so the public think)……………..
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Do you know what I am missing from PIE right now… News stories about Boomin’! **places tin hat on head and runs off to hide**
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Don’t know if I am welcome here, I’m just a buyer, but can I say I found Zoopla a better service than RM. It made it easier to search for keywords where RM literally ignores them. Zoopla let’s you update all your search keywords when looking at the map view, RM doesn’t.
It would also be helpful if the floorplans were more accurately dimensioned as well. I was trying to see if my furniture would fit in a house but the number of floor plans thay weren’t even the same proportions as the stated dimensions. Some even has rooms with no windows or doors. Not to mention measuring rooms including built in wardrobes just to make the rom seem bigger.
My partner and I are searching for a detached house. I’ve seen mid terraces or semi-detached listed as “detached”. Heck there is a property in Swindon that is listed as detached but is clearly a linked detached to a fish and chip shop!
Point is that with glaring errors like those it makes a mockery of using these services, meaning the house buyer has a harder time finding a home.
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Great to read
I support Zoopla 100%
Thire new Smart Vieiwng tool provides a great video toour and can help you plan your rooms witha measurment tool!
I am happy to pass your comment on
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IT SIMPLE…. just #saynotorightmove
We did and not looked back
Listed anew instruction on @Zoopla today, 4 views, 1 offer and 2 more booked on Sunday
#rightmove #wrongmove
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