Rightmove brushed off concerns about falling agency membership, telling City analysts that nearly all the agents who have come off Rightmove have left the industry.
Agency numbers fell 3% in the first six months of this year, Rightmove revealed in its results on Friday.
The fall took agency numbers down from 17,328 on December 31 to 16,768 on June 30.
The fall over the year is 4.6%: on June 30 last year, Rightmove had 17,585 agency branch members.
However, at a meeting of analysts following publication of its results, Rightmove played down the decline in agents, saying it did not represent a major long-term drag on revenue.
It said that increased ARPA – the amount advertisers pay to list on Rightmove – would protect the downside.
Rightmove also told the analysts that online agency growth had flattened in the year to date.
It said that its market positioning remained compelling, and that small agent listings were being redistributed to those agents paying higher fees to Rightmove.
In its results, Rightmove did not give details as to leads it sent to agents, but told the meeting that enquiries were down 8% in the year to date.
It argued that the decline was proxy for the market, and that Rightmove is keen to give agents the best quality leads.
Exane BNP Paribas reiterated its ‘outperform’ rating on Rightmove. However, the firm reduced its membership forecasts for Rightmove for this year: Exane had thought that there could be a drop of 2% in 2019, but now thinks it could be up to 5%.
Rightmove shares moved up after publication of its results which showed 10% rises in both revenue and profits.
The shares closed at 524p, a rise of 2%.
Comments (21)
I vote LEAVE! let’s set a date and stick with it 31st October sounds like a good day, hand notice in at end of September and all leave, I know we’ll call it REXIT,
Rightmove is like that landlord who wants you to serve a Section 21 notice on a tenant who is paying the rent on time and keeping the house neat and tidy. Said landlord thinks he can get more rent and ends up with a crap tenant. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you Rightmove.
Gosh, Kim Yong-Move must be watching me?
My RM Portal is dead again “Technical Difficulties?” …….that’ll be me then?!
Funny that?
But the whining and the moaning does filter back to the general public when as an agent you explain RM listing is the last job you do when setting a up property and they may miss new property …. I bet most all agents can’t resist having a dig at every opportunity
Everyone whining and moaning that RM are “chatting with city analysts” and not telling them about how poor the engagement is with agents.
Analysts couldn’t care less about the levels of engagement. They care about profitability and dividend returns.
RM continues to deliver this, because they offer the public a single place to view properties, and you agents can’t leave because of that.
The city loves them and so do private investors. Roll on 600p by 2020.
Trollsider
Dear Outsider, The
You’ll want to make sure you don’t pay your estate agent full fees too, I expect.
Is this the return of The Prophet?
We left in February and business is just fine without RM. On the Market and Zoopla work just as well.
Another example of their sheer arrogance. We haven’t all left the industry. One or two might have been driven out by Rightmove’s extortionate fees, but the rest of us have ditched this property referencing service because cost against return wasn’t economical.
In March 2019, i worked out that for every RM enquiry that actually lead to something equated to £151 per enquiry. When we served notice we were bombarded with calls from their “retentions” department who tried to tlee me and my colleagues, that we weren’t using RM correctly and that if we bought more products, we would see a better result.
RM are no longer a property portal. As one client told me last week, to find a property on RM who have to trawl through pages and pages of new homes to get to where you want to be, so he has got the OTM app on his phone and finds life much easier. Ther so-called million of hits are people just browsing. When an enquiry comes in you can’t get hold of them and then, when you do, they are not interested.
As I keep saying on Twitter, the stewards were shuffling deckchairs on The Titanic as she was going down!
It’s funny isn’t it (NOT!)…..
Rightmove chatting away with its City Analysts, basically dismissing its Subscribers concerns that Rightmove has serious failings in its service to Subscribers and is vastly overpriced for what it actually provides to its Subscribers – that’s You & Me …… Estate Agents/Letting Agents.
Then we have Rightmove’s current “Online Survey” pop-up survey that asks the public to spare some of their time feeding back to Rightmove, what they like/don’t like etc.
Now you may wonder, where do the paying Subscribers feature in this Rightmove interaction?
……..NOWHERE! Absolutely NOWHERE!
City Analysts/Shareholders should seriously question Rightmove’s complete lack of engagement with its paying Subscribers.
Rightmove deliberately fails to engage with its Subscribers, fails to meet with its Subscribers in an open forum because it knows the sheer level of discontent/negative feedback that it would receive.
The evidence suggests that Rightmove’s core function is to protect the “monopoly” that it has created.
Rightmove’s lack of engagement with it’s paying Subscribers demonstrates that Rightmove has NO interest in the concerns of its paying Subscribers.
It’s time that Rightmove’s “monopoly” style management was investigated by the appropriate authority and MP’s were lobbied to ask how Our Industry can effectively be held to ransom with “Annual Increases” of 10% that cannot actually be justified.
Rightmove cannot simply continue with its dismissive/controlling attitude towards its paying Subscribers.
The level of service they provide is truly shocking.
No other supplier in the history of business provides so little face time to its customers.
With all of the money they generate, they should be world class in all areas.
Alas their website is dull and their attitude to their clients is appalling!!!
So it’s a…
Don’t worry, the losses are only business that have shut down, you know! those small local independent businesses that employ local families and support local economies. The good news is, now their gone, we are charging more for the big boys that have taken over their stock.
Happy days!
Colours nailed to the mast again!
It feels like one of those “I’m Spartacus” moments! If u left rm but not the industry please feel free to stand and declare!!
We left RM in July 2017.
We’re seriously considering doing the same now they are charging us over £1400 inc VAT. Did it impact your business?
RM seem very complacent, yet their own numbers indicate that they should have good reason to be worried.
– 40% of their EA members have stock levels of 20 or less, with increasing transaction times.
– Number of properties to rent are down to 135k in June 2019 compared with 155k in June 2018.
Losing 3% of members in the last six months and a fall in enquiries of 8% will only compound the problems they face as more members are forced to seek value elsewhere.
What are the odds on RM announcing a “price freeze” in the coming weeks? – if they do, then we will know they have finally seen that light at the end of the tunnel !
95% of their customers are paying through gritted teeth and are desperate for an alternative.
Rightmove Market Capitalisation currently = £4.7 billion
If we say 90% of revenue comes from sales & letting agents (remainder from new homes), 17,585 agency branches represent 90% of the market cap i.e. £4.23bn.
Each branch represents £240,546 value to the Rightmove brand.
How many branches are there that could be sold for £240,546?
Now see why this situation is completely bonkers?!!
Congratulations to Van Mildert.
For RM though, this acquisition marks a turning point in strategy that suggests they have no forthcoming innovation. For a company with such substantial reach, resources and margins that’s a medium term sell-signal. It’s remarkable that the city ignores increasing frustration from their agent subscribers.
Rightmove reached its price point a few years ago.
I heard by next year, where agents could advertise a few COMMERCIAL properties as part of their core Sales and Lettings membership will now be required to take out separate membership.
COMMERCIAL property membership will cost £435 plus VAT for 1-15 properties and £650 plus VAT for 16-30 properties.
I am assuming if RM are Introducing this for Commercial Property they will also Introduce this setup for New Home sales too.
And that’s how they plan to squeeze more revenue out of people who still advertise on RightMove.