Rightmove has been strongly tipped to investors, with an analyst saying that its growth prospects are “among the strongest in European media”.
William Packer, of Exane BNP Paribas, told investors that Rightmove “remains a key pick” on its long-term growth potential, backed by its “must-have status for estate agents”.
The analyst describes Rightmove’s traffic as healthy and Zoopla’s as sticky “despite its inventory losses”, but says OnTheMarket is so far “struggling to build meaningful engagement”.
Exane adds: “We estimate visitors at 2% of Rightmove. Rightmove’s audience advantage remains huge.”
The firm predicts more revenue earned per advertiser for Rightmove in the coming year, and says that Rightmove will continue to enhance estate agent productivity significantly.
Exane, which has an “outperform” rating on Rightmove, does see some risks: a marketing war among portals, and the possibility of a slowdown in the property market.
Exane issued its findings after hosting Rightmove CEO Nick McKittrick on a roadshow at the weekend.
They are here
From an Agent’s perspective reading this it is fairly obvious that Mr Packer has failed to understand, give credit to or respect one thing; the Rightmove customer base. He can be forgiven for thinking Rightmove have a clear path ahead of them with Zoopla and OTM duelling hard for second position. However it is my experience that it was this sort of arrogant, high handed customer abusive attitude that fuelled the notion of an Agent affinity group in the first place.
I think Mr Packer has and is failing to understand occasionally mighty vessels like the Titanic can be driven on too hard in the conditions and can come up too hard and too fast against things they haven’t spotted or have dismissed as inconsequential.
Despite all the confident talk Rightmove is a legacy technology system that is expensive and when analysed properly against agency KPI’s, inefficient in the extreme. I think if Mr Packer were being briefed objectively he would not be quite so confident for Rightmove’s future but given his wages come from convincing investors to shell out a few more pence can understand why he is saying what he is. It doesn’t have to be true or correct as long as enough someones believe it to add a penny to the share price.
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Totally agree, look at Tesco’s, too big. too fast, too controlling and think they are calling the shots, not anymore. RM will have its day if they don’t start looking after their clients. There is an old adage out there ‘that the customer is always right’, we as estate agents have to decide who their customer is, is it us the estate agents or is it the consumer? We should be controlling our product and not just handing it over and waiting for the phone to ring……… our route to market should be the phone and not the advertising!
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I am fairly confident Rightmove has had its day, the good times are already over. A few people have seen what I have been up to and although I have no aspirations to be number 1, topple, or bring down anyone or influence where and when any Agency owner does or doesn’t advertise, I have turned both Rightmove and Zoopla into services that agents want to use rather than need to use. As I said on Friday portals have become a nicety not a necessity! With that shift from a need to want comes control and change. Control over price and a change of attitude towards customers.
There are at least 3 regular posters on here who have seen what I am up to, one in particular is well respected for his brutal honesty when it comes to chancers, spivs and anything not in the interests of those working in the industry at all levels. I would be a fool to make false claim to this audience if I were not sure of my position and able to demonstrate a powerful and seismic shift in the technology that supports this industry and more importantly respect for those in this industry. I have no control over the speed of change but I have caused change to begin and can demonstrated the change has begun.
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What’s the catchphrase ? After hubris, nemesis. Certainly Tesco (as mentioned above) but also RBS, most of the British banks and our friend Gerald Ratner also come to mind……….
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Apart from the c10% increases across the board has anyone here increased their RM spend for this year with extras? Does anyone plan to take out any more extra product. We cut all our extra product a year and a half ago and it got the price down with no loss of business.
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It’s a very murky world… the stocks, shares, analysts world… spinning away to make their living. In my view an overly lucrative trade akin to the only blue chestnut seller in town having his blue chestnut supplier advising everyone to invest in blue chestnuts as they are the future… honest guv… blue chestnuts, you can’t go wrong!
In reality the UK Estate Agency industry is holding Rightmove’s Power Supply… at what point do we pull it out of the wall?
I don’t recall Rightmove preventing the Property Recession or being able to provide a Magic Property Sales Bullet?… that demonstrates how overated their service and products are. They are the digital man arriving in a digital van to paste a new digital billboard when a new property is uploaded… it is staggering to consider that the UK Estate Agency Industry built them and yet RM and their analysts, financial friends think it will always be so.
Once again Ladies & Gentleman… is 26th January 2016 the date that we ditch Rightmove? …without a target date it’s no wonder RM sit happily on their portal pedestal.
In the interim can we have a survey pre & post OTM to show how many members of both portals dropped their RM Extra Products and now use RM Basic Membership only. To be fair, I joined Rightmove in 2005 and have only ever had a basic membership yet my business has acheived a substantial market share for quality sales… as Rightmove is only part of my marketing strategy… I know it doesn’t sell properties, we do!… and the business leads are mostly weak because they have no quality… my best business leads come direct because of our reputation and local brand… not because of RM.
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I’ve posted before we were with RM from the very start and that we pulled the plug on RM twice before and our sales went up, yes they did. The customers found they had to talk to us, they didn’t walk away, on the contrary our waiting list increased as they couldn’t hide behind RM. It was only listing that made us return and that was due to the recession and bad mouthing by some competitors (namely two corporates), which at last is over. Everyone I speak to are happy to ditch RM but want to see OTM become an everyday name to make the jump and we are getting there. I am pro OTM (no surprise to some) but the fact is the public are more than happy to use OTM, they don’t care which web site as long as their are properties for them to see.
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last line should read “… as long as their properties are there for them to see”. I don’t know about anyone else but we are rushed off our feet, not enough hours in the day, so apologies for grammar and I’m rushing out.
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Have to laugh at this story, what nonsense. Where on earth is this 10% growth going to come from? Not from the public as this is a free service to them. Can only come from agents fee’s and advertising. Agents can’t increase property stock that is declining, which for a sensible business means a tight hand on the purse. If ever there was a time to ditch RM for a more competitive alternative which the public will be happy to use, is now. Now matter who that web portal may be. RM has had its day and this story is more in keeping with the concerns within the city that they may revert back to last years down rating ….. remember those headlines, they haven’t gone away.
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We see competitive concerns as overdone (Zoopla / Agents Mutual) with Rightmove’s must have status with estate agents a key advantage. Rightmove is also attractively valued relatively to international peers.
And there it is in a nutshell, take this advantage away as soon as possible, by getting OTM to the No 2 position, then move on and take it away altogether.
Even the city know that as long agents believe they can’t do without RM, their future is secure!!
Dropping one other portal will not make any difference to your business. Agents don’t need more leads, they need quality staff to deal with the leads they get!
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Would the £3k each ‘Gold’ member pumped into setting up OTM have shown a better return invested in Rightmove shares?
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Apart from trying to be an irritant, what was the point of that post?
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Ask that question again in 5 years and you’ll get the answer.
Until then – guess as many times as you like.
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Our £3k investments were in OTM to help return our industry to its place of providing a UK Property Portal which is focussed on property and NOT shareholder financial return/3rd party services andd products combined with automatic unjustified annual percentage increases.
In our case Standard Rightmove Membership from Day 1… no add-on products ever… yet each year the cost goes up?!… really! …really!!! …forgive me but what extra value have you added each year?… ah, yes… of course… Rightmove Shareholder Profits!
rightdrippingroastmove.co.uk
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As an interesting aside… a Rightmove insider tells me they (RM) are already preparing for their existing members resigning en-masse and moving to OnTheMarket in the future. Seems there are those happy to walk away with their very tidy/lucrative share profits when the writing is on the wall… the phrase from one Senior Source was “nothing lasts forever”.
It will be interesting to watch the cashing in of those with company shares and the signal that is being sent as the profit cheques land thru the letterboxes!
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I’ve been told that to. I’ve also been told that the strategy is not to attack OTM as they have Z doing that, but to concentrate on promoting themselves with stats and paid for media stories?
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