Rightmove this morning announced a 10% rise in revenue along with an 11% increase in operating profits for last year.
The portal had revenue of £267.8m, on which it made an operating profit of £198.6m. The sums were up respectively from £243.3m and £178.3m in 2017.
The rise in revenue was driven by growth in both Rightmove’s agency and new homes business, with membership up very slightly to 20,454.
Average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) was up £83 per month to £1,005. Rightmove said that ARPA is “continuing to grow” and that it is confident of making further progress this year.
CEO Peter Brooks-Johnson said: “The resilience of our customer base is shown by our stable membership numbers, with particularly notable growth coming from new homes developments.”
While revenue from new homes grew 17% last year to £46.2m, agency contributed easily the most revenue at £201m, 9% up from £185.2m in 2017. The actual increase in revenue from estate agents was £15.8m per year.
There was a slight 2% drop in estate agency branches at 17,328, down from 17,626 the year before. Rightmove said that reflected “slightly tighter trading conditions” for agents in the second half of 2018.
Brooks-Johnson said in his strategic report: “Our continued progress is testament to our unwavering focus on the UK property advertising market and the huge effort Rightmovers [sic] have made to build our business in partnership with our industry customers.
“We remain confident in our ability to deliver further growth as we continue to shape the UK property market, and innovate to make our marketplace simpler and more efficient.”
Rightmove reported a rise in traffic with visits to the site up over 4%, averaging nearly 132m visits each month. It said that its portal had virtually the whole of the property market in one place, with 1m UK residential properties advertised on Rightmove, more than any other UK portal.
Rightmove said: “With visits to our platforms growing for the 17th consecutive year we continued to increase the exposure of our customers’ brands and properties.
“This exposure generated over 42m leads for our customers. This was down 3% year on year mirroring the fall in property transactions as a result of a slightly cooler housing market in 2018.”
Rightmove said the total dividend for last year will be 6.5p per share. The final dividend of 4p will be paid on May 31.
This morning’s report reveals that Rightmove’s CEO had a total pay package of £1,490,178 last year, including salary, cash and shares bonuses, and long-term incentive. Its finance director had a total remuneration package of £1,110,553.
Analyst William Packer at Exane BNP Paribas said this morning that Rightmove’s results showed healthy growth, but noted “weakening agency numbers”. Exane rated Rightmove as “outperform”.
Let me guess, does it go like this?
Rightmove commented….
”Despite a more challenging property market we are still making lots of money ….thankfully we just keep increasing our prices to ensure we remain profitable. It’s a great formula and has worked extremely well for us…..”
Rightmove were asked how they justified their automatic annual price increases…..
They replied…..
“Simples really ….. because we can!”
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Congratulations Rightmove. What a great success story!
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Well done agents. Keep bending over!!!
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Yep, they’re definitely touching their toes now!
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And their eyes are watering.
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Boots have sold out of KY
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BOOTS, Mr Gillham?
Last thing EYE readers want is them to chuffin’ march in…
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So rm are shaping the prop market, hmm so u pay rm and u think they work for you wen in fact you pay them and in effect your stock works for them and they take all the plaudits and you get the blame for the slight change (downward) in numbers where rm acknowledge agents are having a bad time and yet they still get out the rod to beat you wen it comes to the next round of rate rises, you suckers, roll on Christmas to hear all the bleating again but weakness is what rm play on and so they know, you will carry on paying, it beggars belief!
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Question.
Have you heard of full stops? They’re little dots that signify the end of a sentence.
They’re nippy little blighters but they have their uses.
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Comment of the day for me. Brill.
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Meanwhile zoopla shows it’s support to agents by emailing everyone on their database a free valuation from Payanyway YOPA.
On the market . What is your next plan?
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I saw this too – what a disgrace!
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Could be 200 posts on the first two articles today
Happy Friday everyone
Our two arch enemies in the stocks once more
Anyone want some rotting fruit to throw?
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From the Rightmove report:
‘We care about our customers’ business success & building strong partnerships is vital to support their ambitions. To that end we are spending more time with customers than ever before and making sure that our recommendations add value to their business’.
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Translation: We need bigger fees to cover rep’s time.
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They shouldn’t be making recommendations, doing business plans or anything else.
They should be driving free valuations to all of their clients not just being an online shop window that charges far too much and then tries to justify that by being a condescending supplier.
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I believe this is the first time their total agency branch numbers have ever fallen. Stock brokers might say that it’s due to tough trading conditions, but to be 300 branches down must also reflect the growing numbers of agents not renewing on principle. They might keep their revenue growing another year or two but with genuine alternatives increasing we may be seeing peak RM soon. It’s interesting to note that among BestAgent Marketplace users, RM is the third most used portal after Zoopla first and OTM second. We now look forward to welcoming OneDome as another free portal choice for agents.
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We all have a choice. Stand by wringing our hands and moaning or, take a deep breath and actually do something. It seems a rapidly growing number of agents are taking the latter course of action.
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Well this in my first day without RM and the sky hasn’t dropped in yet!
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We all dream of having a business return like RM, those on here whom constantly moan about their fees are unbelievably still paying their fees, so in reality who is the sucker?
It is not by a long way the best looking portal, it just happens to be the most used portal, and whilst agents believe that without them they will die, it will continue to be so.
I suggest those that bemoan them, but continue to use them, invest in some of their shares, everyone is a winner 🙂
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There’s so much to say,
But I’ll just grab the popcorn, sit back and watch the comments roll in!
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As of today, I have officially left RM, but my stats will be included in these announced results
It will be interesting to see their stats this time next year. I believe significant numbers will have left once analysis of the quality and cost of the leads actually provided, not to mention the recent price hike, show how RM have become poor value for money against Zoopla and OTM (whose subscriptions combined are less than RM) Further significant numbers will fall by the wayside this year due to the low activity in sales and increased costs and pressures in lettings, not to mention the forthcoming tenant fees ban which will have an effect on virtually all agency businesses. Client Money Protection Insurance will prohibit some agents trading, which will wipe out a further slice of their business.
It will be an interesting year that will see many losers and some significant winners.
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Good luck. The more people that leave, opens more opportunity to us that remain.
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and the more people that leave , the more you will have to pay.
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Depends on the length of the agreement….
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MarketThis
“The more people that leave, opens more opportunity to us that remain.”
I’m stating the obvious here – but that’s a pretty one-dimensional ‘marketing plan’ of yours…
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Do you really think for a fraction of a second that is an agent?
If it is can you imagine being up against them on an appraisal?
So ‘Market this’ reckons you should go with them because they’re on Rightmove and I’m not?? Err bit embarrassing they’re sort of admitting they’re reliant on Rightmove to sell your home. I tell you what, as I’ve lost the instruction why not list the property with Doorsteps they’ll whack this on Rightmove for £99.
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4 months in for us now and very pleased that we are no longer stumping up the cash for what we got. We know it’s not stopped us selling houses as our sales have been good. Last week we generated a viewing on a property through OTM that had recently started to use another agent on a multi (property sits between our 2 locations) and has it listed on RM-they havn’t Requested it through there. Experiences like this give you the cases studies you need to address the issue with concerned vendors. But gues what? You’ll only develop the case studies if you come off RM. The longer you are off, the easier it gets. The longer RM take a high handed attitude with agents who have left, the less likely they are to get them back when they start valuing the reasonable subs that we would give them.
Property Pundit is bang on below. If you haven’t got the .. or just aren’t at that point where you think its worth sacking them, start yourself down the path-PP’s 8 step path-and ease the pressure on your wallet and mental state by taking back a little control.
Anybody in the current market who is paying over the odds for RM’s bells and whistles without being able to definitively prove they are providing value for money ie you are doing it because you’re afraid not to will hand an advantage to your competitors, is certifiable.
Don’t stay in an abusive relationship, their behaviour is not going to change so you have to change yours.
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Today’s action plan for agents:
1. Cancel your RM membership
2. If you’re not giving up RM membership just yet, only subscribe to the most basic package
3. If you’re not giving up RM membership just yet, remove all RM stickers in your office, logos from stationery & web sites
4. If you share property details on social media, use links to your own website not to the portals
5. Ensure you promote YOUR website FIRST, don’t give any portal traffic
6. Make your feelings known to RM. OK, they’ll probably ignore them but you never know
7. Finally, put the action plan together for when you finally give them the bullet
8. Don’t moan on here about RM fees if you’re not prepared to carry out any of the points above. TAKE BACK CONTROL.
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‘In partnership with our industry customers’. They must have been laughing their heads off when they wrote that into their statement. They usually claim 20,000 estate agents are using their services, looks to be heading to 15,000 all of whom will have to pick bigger and bigger bills going forward. Once their numbers drop below 15,000 we will have a proper market for portal services.
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This exposure generated over 42 million leads for our customers. This was down 3% year on year mirroring the fall in property transactions as a result of a slightly cooler housing market in 2018.
So,we are providing a poorer service to customers but our fees will be going up – looks like the wheels are coming off the RM bus !
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All those leads…. wow! what happened to the number of completed sales last year? They went down, not by a little but by a lot
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RM have, in previous years, claimed to generate over 50 million leads.
Their calculation of ARPA is interesting…. (5) Revenue from Agency and New Homes advertisers in a given month divided by the total number of advertisers during the month, measured as a monthly average over the year.
The average is much lower if you just take the agency income and divide by number of agents, which suggests a significant number of agents take a break in December or have a very flexible charging arrangement?
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According to RMs’ results to the end of December 2018, they had already lost 2% (257) of agents and it seems that this number may now be in freefall since the latest round of price hikes.
Certainly, the FT Alphaville page is full of speculation from investors. At 11:11 ‘BE stated “There’s Rightmove, which seems to be haemorrhaging estate agents.” amongst 22 other mentions of the company.
Sources
https://plc.rightmove.co.uk/~/media/Files/R/Rightmove/2018/full-year-results-2018-presentation.pdf
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/marketslive/2019-03-01/
Perhaps someone from Zoopla owned software houses Expert Agent, Jupix and Alto etc. would like to tell Rosalind or Nick how many feeds to Rightmove there are today compared to 2018 and 2017?
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300 odd agents gone … From my conversations locally that number will be significantly higher on their next annual statement. We took the plunge in January and the truth is it’s made no difference to us … well apart from the extra £1000 a month in our bank account – and that’s after paying our new portal. If agents start believing in themselves and life after Rightmove there will be a really change in the portal market and all those savings will probably help keep some of those agents trading.
Apart from the above we get the pleasure of slaying the beast that has beat us down and ripped us off for years…
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Rightmove down by 33 points at lowest point today
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It would be nice to know some more information? It’s impossible to know whether another agency would have the same experience without knowing your size and location.
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Rightmove are only as big as you make them. When you are looking for a new car, do you only go to 1 website? 1 dealer? No, you shop around, look at what is available. RM are not the be all and end all.
Home hunters will search every corner of the web trying to find “the” home for them. So either put your grown up pants on and leave them and don’t look back, or bend over that barrel.
And for the question asked above about how many branches feed to RM from software provider, it is a little over 3k.
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We have handed in our notice. We come off at the end of the month.
Sick and tired of their rubbish service, ludicrous price hikes and constantly complicated pricing structures all designed to confuse and get more money.
A rep?? Haha! We haven’t seen a rep since we first signed up nearly 10 years ago and have probably had about 9 different “account managers”.
Useless. Vote with your feet.
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