Rightmove says that it is on course for its busiest year on record.
It says leads to member agents are up by over one fifth so far this year compared with the same period last year.
The portal has also revealed plans to send out new “instruction getting” packs to members shortly, and says that next year it will be massively upping its investment on services and infrastructure.
It is not clear whether this could dig in to Rightmove’s profit margin – although sources suggest this is unlikely – or what shareholders’ reaction could be.
In the nine months to September, home movers had made 21m telephone enquiries to Rightmove members and sent over 13m email enquiries, both up over 20%.
Email enquiries sent from mobile devices are up 45%, and have grown so rapidly that they have already surpassed the number sent during the whole of 2013.
Rightmove is also currently budgeting for increased investment next year, when it will be spending more on both marketing and technology.
It is increasing its team of back office developers, analysts and designers from 80 to 100.
It also expects to increase its annual spend on hosting services and licenses from £2.5m to £4m in 2015. The site already uses more than 200 separate servers.
Rightmove currently claims eighth place in the top ten UK websites by pages viewed, according to Experian Hitwise last month.
Rightmove director Miles Shipside told Eye: “It’s been a busy year – and it looks set to be our busiest on record.
“The investments we’ve made this year, such as the upgrade of rightmoveplus, the industry’s fastest data feed which uploads in real-time and our new ‘find your happy’ campaign, have all helped lead to a 20%-plus uplift in both telephone and email enquiries sent to Rightmove members.
“At this time of year we know that many of our customers will be starting to turn their attention to next year in a bid to make the best possible start, and the focus again looks set to be on winning stock.
“We’ll continue to support them through the remainder of this year with the launch of our new Instruction Winning Packs in a few weeks and our exclusive advertising with Channel 4 that puts us on TV for the rest of the year.
“Our new research among thousands of sellers and landlords shows that having their property in front of the largest and most engaged home-moving audience will be critical, and to help support our customers we’ll be investing more than ever in both marketing and technology in 2015.”
The new research Shipside referred to was conducted by the site itself in July among 2,215 consumers.
Asked “Which property website do you turn to first?”, 70% replied Rightmove, 21% said Zoopla, 3% said Primelocation and 6% said Other – which includes both portals and agents’ own websites.
They call that research, typical RM, creating dodgy figures again.
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Who are you then, one of Springetts Sproggetts no doubt!!
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Great – a pack to help win more vendors, that everyone else in the area also has. Doh
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@jmeapps01 – after a quick Google search on your username I can see that you first post on Eye was late September, and you have been critical of Zoopla and AM in defence of Righmove in the six articles you have posted on. Each one of them scaremongering. You have not commented on any other industry news. You are clearly a junior Rightmove marketing person. Please ask your boss to loan you "Marketing for Dummies" when he or she is finished with it. I would have expected Rightmove to be above this, but I think it is a general industry fault that we do expect more from RM. So do you have other Eye personas set up that are going to stick up for you now? "Springetts Sproggetts"… pathetic.
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All too late if you ask me for all the money they have been making. Yield something like 74% appears to be doing the rounds on the grape vine and have they consulted their customers (us) about the changes they think is best, err NO. I'm also told from a RM insider that fee's are planned to go up in the new year. They are having a laugh and milking it for every penny they can squeeze out of agents. No wonder they are buying their shares back, it is the only way to keep the share value up!
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Hang on, can you buy a FEATURED pack? With different colours and highlights. Rubbish.
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So they asked RM users via RM which website did they visit first! What were the odds RM may have come out on top?……………Like Trevor says, I look forward to being sold the 150gsm paper marketing pack with fancy colours as an upgrade to the black and white 80gsm pack!…………I am surprised RM have not made it compulsory for House Hunters to register to search for property and charge them one price for allowing images to be shown and extra if they want to see measurements as well…….
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I really believe that RM have no other solution to fleecing agents online, it's all been done, and it does not work.
Premium listing = Rubbish
Featured Listing = Even more rubbish
Featured Agent = Could be the only one that worked, but, when i had my arm twisted round my back to spend my stupid monthly fees on upgrades it did ***** all for me.
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Ros, can you make it so when we comment and do a line break <br> it actually works instead of just a bulk paragraph please?
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