Rightmove has strongly defended its business model to agents in the light of the independent survey launched by Estate Agent Today, which shows that three-quarters of agents could decamp from the site.
Their votes suggest they will quit the portal en masse, largely in favour of free sites. Should they carry out their threat, the potential harm to Rightmove – listed on the Stock Exchange – would be shattering.
The topic of Rightmove’s fees – between £400 and £500 per month per estate agency office – has been heavily discussed by agents on this website. Some have argued that they cannot do without the giant portal that dominates the market, but some posts have discussed the possibility of an organised mass departure from the portal.
Rightmove commercial director Miles Shipside has made no attempt to stifle the debate and told Estate Agent Today: “Especially in this tough market, there is rightly discussion on the pros and cons of ‘free’ portals and how they can raise adequate revenue to offer an effective service for home movers and estate agents.
“They will face the challenge that we did initially of investing substantially and consistently over several years.
“As a guide, Rightmove has invested over £100m to achieve over 40 million visits a month – six times more pages of property viewed than any other portal, and three times longer consumer visits than any other portal.
“Rightmove has a dedicated team of over 100 field and customer service consultants to work with our 12,000 estate agency members to maximise their investment with us. They are in regular contact with members to discuss the value of Rightmove’s services either ongoing or when renewal becomes due.”
All told, an astonishing 75.7% of agents who participated in the Estate Agent Today poll say they will not be renewing their annual subscriptions to Rightmove.
A total of 1,230 votes have been cast so far.
Of these, 931 (75.7%) say they will not renew while 299 (24.3%) say they will stay with the hugely successful portal, which claims a 90% share of the listings market.
But industry pundits wonder whether agents really will not renew, or whether they are registering a highly vocal protest vote over the portal’s prices.
The survey also asked agents who say they will not be renewing their subscriptions to Rightmove to say which portal they will be signing up to instead.
The easy winner is Globrix, with 514 votes, followed by PropertyLive (the National Association of Estate Agents’ new portal, which launches next Tuesday) with 347 votes.
After these come the other paid-for sites, Findaproperty (304), Propertyfinder (298), Prime Location (199), Fish4homes (135) and Thinkproperty (106). Trailing are Hot property with 69, now part of Propertyfinder, and Zoomf (free) with 56, Nestoria (free) with 49, look4aproperty (paid for) with 32, and home (free) with 17.
Meanwhile, voting can still continue.
www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/feature/voting/rightmove_survey
Three quarters of agents threaten to quit Rightmove
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Comments
www.easiersale.co.uk offers a completely free online property marketing portal for agents and private sellers.
Have you seen Zoopla's price hike letter - beyond a f'ing joke!
Small independent agencies can't afford over a thousand pounds per month for these two websites
Very interesting. Agents do not know how much power they hold. They have the properties and Rightmove would be nothing without their data. Rightmove should be paying the agents not the other way around! Check out www.latesthomes.co.uk and see how it can be done for FREE
Similar to other agents, we have cancelled our Rightmove subscription after yet another price hike. Everyone I am speaking to is doing the same. £400 - £500 per month per office ? No chance, they'll be bust before the end of 2009 !
Had to laugh at this..... obviously Mystic Meg's vision of the future didn't turn out the way this agent wanted.
Bit late to this thread, but had to comment:
Property Portals dominate the search engines. If you type in a generic search or even a specific one you're bound to land on a portal
My husband and I sold our property on www.luxuryhomesuk.com
I'm an estate agent so I listed it along with the rest of my properties and 3 weeks later we had an offer.
Maybe we had a different experience because the luxury market is more niche?
In any case, have been advertising with Rightmove for years and as a generic portal they offer a lot :)
Agents should migrate to property portal tech 3 such as rentdirectuk.co.uk. The offering is free to letting agents to list properties, letting agents can communicate with private landlords who use the site. Their is a forum on the site that letting agents can use to give specialist advice to both landlords and tenants - and in doing do promote their brand.
Very nice site!
Very nice site!
Very nice site!
Very nice site!
Very nice site!
I don't know when you lot (estate agents) are going to get it. People do not have the time or inclination to trawl through, register with etc. endless portals.
They want ONE portal with every property for sale in the country on it.
Surely - and I have no connection with them - Globrix is the answer. I'm under the impression it is free to agents (although someone else here refers to a cost?) and as well as using the usual upload tools - Globrix will also scrape your web site.
Why the NAEA is starting another portal baffles me. Their first attempt failed because Rightmove cornered the market. I repeat - punters want ONE portal to look at. And, once Globrix increase their tv advertising, they will simply replace Rightmove as the default portal.
If I were the CEO of Rightmove I would announce plans now to immediately make their service free and move to the Globrix model. They are like a rabbit stuck in the headlights ... agents hate them, someone else is slowly but surely replacing them, the market is dead and, what do they do? put their prices UP! Deserve to vanish.
Yes I agree with you!
Similar to other agents, we have cancelled our Rightmove subscription after yet another price hike. Everyone I am speaking to is doing the same. £400 - £500 per month per office ? No chance, they'll be bust before the end of 2009 !
If you are looking for a cost effective way to generate high quality new leads, instructions, enquiries and website traffic look at:
www.EstateAgents123.com
You could list 60 branches for a year on a premium listing for the same price as 1 branch with rightmove.
Finished with Rightmove May 2008. We have Had better leads with Propertyfinder.com even in this present market. O and saved some money.
Another approach:
Work your fees into the rent and advertise on flatshare sites like Flatmateclick.co.uk or Spare room. Saves you headaches. Fees are negligible.
Please bear in mind that websites shouldn't be bought on 'visitor' numbers, but test the water with actual responses instead. Visitor numbers are bound to be high, when such large volumes of estate agents log on to update their listings. No wonder Rightmove's visitor numbers have dropped so significantly. How on earth could there ever have been that many people looking to move at any one time? It's just not possible. I for one, am glad the bubble has burst, making for a fairer market place.
Its time to all move on from Rightmove - We have today cancelled our membership with Rightmove as they tried today to justify their price hike to me which went down like a lead balloon. At a time where agents are struggling to stay afloat Rightmove thinks its ok to increase their price by a substantial amount and then try to justify it by blowing their own trumpet - They have share holders to pay so need high prices - their greed is their downfall and i will be moving to other portals.
Easy solution is to close all the Estate Agents and put our houses up for sale ourselves via free websites. Estate Agents are just middle men who are just an extra cost, not met one worth the money they get.
Youre all doomed. Why? Because no FTB will go near the housing market until they return to 2000 prices.
DROP house prices. Problem solved... Doh!!!
To keep good faith with Agents in these turblent times Rightmove should offer a reduction in fees for (say) a six month period - this makes for a good business relationship for when times do improve. If not then the suggestion of a mass departure may well work!!
Personally I made the mistake of jumping onto the so called free option of Globrix which I am now paying £5000 a year for. I wish I had listened to my partner and her 'better the devil you know attitude'. The grass isn't always greener be careful what you wish for. Have to say Rightmove let me back on at my old rate unfortunately I have no way out of my globrix contract
Reading the press statements I know we are days away from the unveiling of the mother of all portal which is intended to challenge Rightmove.
Unless my research is wrong there are major holes in PropertyLive. Some basic questions need answering and I do hope that NAEA have the answers.
1. Who owns the sub – domains? www.propertylive.com
2. Who is www.propertylive.me?
3. Who owns the other extensions to PropertyLive like .TV, .NET etc?
Why do I ask? Simply any strategy to help the sector on the subject is only plausible with an effective online plan. Whilst I really hope that this is the answer I feel little has gone into looking at the medium to long term. Yes short term you will get many agents joining why not its FREE and Rightmove have been slow to respond.
Who ever is the marketing and technology partner need to look at my questions above as if they do not own www.propertylive.com and www.propertylive.me is a competing site then they are on the back foot.
Never mind that these sub - domains have already benefited from the high profile campaign that the agents are paying for thru their membership fee of the NAEA.
If I am right and I hope that I am wrong, it’s like having a car with out an engine. There will be a large dependency on PropertyLive to grow thru organic search which means I will type in PropertyLive into google and up will come a list of PropertyLive sites not all being the site the consumer is looking for.
A percentage will go to the sub domains. Some of you might be saying so what but even if its 10% its enough to make a difference to any estate agent. Can any one afford to lose 1 in 10 customer, NO!
The simple answer could be www.propertylive.me might me the beta site of the NAEA, one that they are testing I hope, then we are some way to fixing the issue. If not then the NAEA need to start looking for a new name now or be held to ransom by the current owners and pay some big money in buying up the domains. Some are sitting there still for as little as £5.00.
We shall wait and see but there is a much more effective approach that could once and for all fix the issue.
How did Rightmove start? - Countrywide, Connell’s and Halifax teamed up to create a portal Rightmove, which even today is worth a lot of money. Yes they have spent £100 million and yes they have 100 staff members’ servicing in 12000 agents. Yes they have a board on fat salaries.
Paid for by their members and the majority of them are independent. Agents have known for years that the big four are getting cheap subscriptions whilst the independent pays the balance to prop the balance sheet up.
The industry on a whole is independent so why are the corporate dominating?
Yes they have the financial clout but the Independent has the numbers and if for one second the independent agent stopped and thought about this and acted sensibly we would see more than one change in the industry.
It will only take a dozen of the top 20 independents to break the corporate back forever.
Townends, Bradley’s, Haart, Belvoir, Winkworth, KFH, Andrews and the names can go on and all of these board rooms and there founders have the vision the talent and experience to take the sector into the 21st Century.
Collectively they could not just put Rightmove on the back foot but also create a direction for every agent in the country that has been lacking for years on subjects that will change the industry forever.
Just to name one, regulation a topic that for decades has been unresolved. Other sectors from aviation, fashion, food and medicine have worked closely to adapt to the demands of the consumer and technology we are years if not a full decade behind in catching up.
Whilst I fully appreciate that this is not an easy task but one truly achievable. The timing is right is just takes a few of the above big names to knock on a few doors and the momentum will start.
In the mean time I wish PropertyLive every success for Tuesday and the months ahead. If Miles Shipside wants to keep his job then I suggest he starts listening to his members and acts accordingly.
I guess both sides of the debate on the naea website are correct. For those who are already naea members the new portal will indeed be free, but for those who are not it cannot be said to be free. We found a portal called PropertyFoyer.com that is truly free. It is a very basic, no-frills website but it has all the search and other functionality that one needs. We have been getting some leads from PropertyFoyer.com, not a deluge, just a few. We have been noticing more and more agents appearing on it so I guess the leads can only increase. It may appeal to other small independents who are not naea members, or indeed it may even be worthwhile for naea members to register and upload a few properties just as an insurance police to keep the naea honest and on the straight and narrow.
From the outset I have steadfastly refused to sign up with Rightmove.
Only an idiot would pay in excess of £400 per branch per month in this marketplace to keep the directors of Rightmove in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to at the expense of estate agents who haven't had the courage to say no to them.
This is a time for 'good housekeepng' - if the money isn't coming in as it used to, it can't be going out like it used to. Believe me, you don't need Rightmove!
Did you know in my town, relatively small, over 9000 people use the keyphrase estate agents (town on Google every single month.
Add in the property queries and you've a never ending supply of highly targetted buyers and sellers.
Quick way - do some keyword research and bid on them using google Adwords
Bit Longer But FREE - Well it's not free as it will take time - Search Engine Optimisation - Getting on the first page of Google for lots of keywords.It's relatively easy to learn and when you realise about 50% of all searched done at Google are for local services, it gives you an idea about learning how the web really works.
Left Rightmove today, been concentrating on Search Engine Optimisation and Google Adwords over the last few months. Results: 50% redution in costs and 20% increase in sales. Go on - Get rid once and for all. Three cheers for the free market.Ps Will people like brightcove and INEA go and peddle their wares somewhere else - If you're not going to add to the conversation - shut up.
To take Mike Carters points (above) I disagree that trackability is key to a sites survival. That being said, as an industry, he is perfectly correct in that we need to track where our leads actually come from as, in the main; we are woeful bad at it and it is a very useful discipline.
However, in the case of property portals (and many other products/ services), trackability is not as important as the PERCEPTION of success by the end user. Do consumers buy brand names because they ARE better or because they are PERCEIVED to be better? Exactly!
Certain portals spend vast sums of money telling the public that their portal is THE place to be seen; "if you aren't on ‘xyz’ portal, you won’t sell your home" is the inference. If those portals are allowed or (worse) helped by agents to build that perception in the mind of the agents own customers, then the agents will forever be at those portals mercy (remember local newspaper advertising charges until agents worked together to demand lower rates)
The success or failure of a portal, therefore, depends on the perception of its effectiveness by the public and of the agents to supply it with data to make it effective and not how many leads at £x per lead it actually supplies. If the agents don't supply the portal with data, the site will fail however, if the portal manages to convince the public that any given agent is valueless if they are not on their site, then the agent will fail. At that point the portal can do as it pleases with charges. Hmm, that sounds familiar!
What all agents want leads, and leads come from site visitors, ther several ways to buy traffic to your site over and above your SEO activity.Agents are leaving Rightmove because they can drive traffic to their sites through a combination the free to list sites such as Globrix and buying google traffic ,which if they are smart they can do at a far lower price than what RightMove want to charge
Go on Simon do it!! I have 3 offices and left months ago....whats happened....2 of my competitors have now left...its now only the smallest agents in my area(about 2 or 3)that are left,the 3 biggest incl myself have all left Rightmove....life goes on...globrix and naea here we go!!!
Well Chard don't appear to be happy!!
Not good news for them.
http://www.chardblog.co.uk/2008/10/three-quarters-of-estate-agents.html
Any medium that is not value for money or delivering the right results faces the chop.
http://www.chard.co.uk
Home.co.uk makes agent ad-spend go further by sending buyers to PropertyFinder, Fish4, Propertytoday, Homes24 et al.
We used to send buyers to property details pages on Rightmove but they now threaten anyone that links to them with legal action. Yes, Rightmove REFUSE to allow buyer traffic to be sent to their clients' properties!! (See their Ts & Cs). How can that be value for money?
Please note Home.co.uk send buyers direct to agents' websites if you upload your property details page URLs. Oh yeah and its FREE!
http://www.home.co.uk/agents/uploads.htm
We woke up to a very different world Wednesday morning and our industry is going to change dramatically from what we have been used to. As a result of the UK bailout and with the predictions for the economy I decided to give notice to Rightmove yesterday and cutting costs elsewhere. Its time to look after number one and ride this storm out!
I have emailed the local independent agents in Brighton and Hove to see what people think of rightmove firstly. From that if the repsonse is too much money and not enough leads, which i think it will be. We will approach rightmove as one group of 40 or so to see if a reduction can be done.
i just stumbled over this site and as someone selling my home and not getting anyonelooking i'm shocked. there seem to be so many organisations NPOFF, ARLA, NAAE, SAVA, ICBA, NAVA... why cant you people get together and actually get the government to get the banks to give people mortgages now that they have all my money anyway as a taxpayer. and it seems to be the same with websites, hundreds of different sites and i've only ever used two - that's if Findaproperty is the one my paper owns. I use Rightmove all the time and found the house i want there if only i could sell mine. if it costs my agent £400 a month then he's paying a fiver a month to advertise my property and yet itll cost me nearly four grand if someone does buy it. if my agent does come off i think i might just put my house on rightmove myself. at least i'd actually answer any emails i got unlike half the agents i email
just given notice.(by the 10th) going to propertyfinder.
Cant understand why you all want to rely on a portal that only does what your own website does, which ever portal you support it is plainly obvious that once they dominate they will put there prices up, there are some portals out there that do different things like partexmyhome.com at least there different, and why dont you all stop using the mass of same thing portals and promote your own website.
Here's an idea (an old one at that)... take your spend (or even half of it) and put it into Google, Yahoo and some of the other paid click models being run by the Web 2.0 property players. Make absolutely sure you can track your return in clicks, calls and emails. Then do your comparison to driving leads the old way (subscriptions). Do it for a couple months and measure your return.
I think you'll find it very interesting to say the least.
http://www1.propertyportalwatch.com/2008/10/opinion-the-real-challenge-for-rightmovecouk/
This guy makes sense ...
It seems to me that agents are forgetting who has made rightmove ..we did and lets face it we have created a monster.but together we also have the power to create a friendlier alternative remember no matter how wonderfull the site is its nothing without OUR property !the key is promote the new sites as we did the old ..tell the public were the properties can be found they will sonn cotton on!
I feel that ist alls very well saying that we will all leave rightmove but who will actually do it? I have three offices and want to be sure that agents are going to do what they say.
Theres no doubt rightmove is a good site but if they are not willing to negotiate their rate like we have to, its time to move on. We have the power not them, if we all suddenly agreed to use another site like say propertyfinder who only charge around £170 month we would instantly make that site as popular as rightmove, so let’s be brave and do it. No conection to propertyfinder.
Does brightmove actually have any clients as he/she seems to have endless amounts of time to add comments to this site? At least my excuse is that I'm retired from the industry!
By a majority of agents coming off Rightmove now or tomorrow, buyers would soon realise that the Portal does not have choice and would soon be asking you the agent "where have all the properties gone" This would immediately devalue Rightmove and would see a silent shift from buyers across to sites such as Globrix who have critical mass. We came off Rightmove some time ago and our market share and sales transactions have not collapsed. Times have changed.
Some know of my public withdrawl from Rightmove 30 Sept.Underhandedly,three times they 'hid'a 60% hike in fees if I rejoined after a brief business-saving payment holiday.'Leaving meeting' followed - they tried to pass off later version contract as the one I had signed.They waived my notice period (see D21) then reneged next day. They claimed no knowledge of a 'reconnection' fee (E 9)shifty! trevor@trevorkent.com
Thought I'd pass on one very important fact that I learned from our Rightmove Field Sales Consultant (whatever that title means!) - to leave Rightmove you have to give one month's notice - and that notice has to be received by the 10TH OF THE MONTH - something to do with their monthly direct debit date - so today's the day for anyone wanting to quit by the end of October. If notice is given after today, it doesn't take effect until the end of November and with the market as it is we don't feel that staying on through November is of any benefit to us at all. So, our plan is to give them notice today, to keep our options open, even if we then retract it later this month and stay on. We'll then do the same next month, and so on. Imagine if they were deluged with Agents all doing the same thing and giving written notice TODAY? That may just help them focus their minds on where their business actually comes from!!
Mark: I take your point but membership was £150 before we introduced the portal and still remains that price. That, to me, is a free benefit! :)
"Posted By Nick Salmon on Friday 10th October 2008
Mark - NAEA membership circa £150 per year. RM fees £3900 per year. You choose."
I'm not disputing the difference in cost, just your claim that it is FREE. It's not, and mis-representation is not good for Estate Agents ;-)
I agree with the anti spamming topic...can the Editor do something about this? As far as Rightmove..I also agree that if you want to pull out then just do it, why wait for others? Rightmove was the market leader but not anymore..there are plenty of portals who are just as good and much cheaper.
In reply to Peter Ellis; the NAEA DOES accept membership from overseas agents BUT, we require them to belong to recognised bodies of those countries. That being said, we are having some technical problems joining members from certain countries whilst ensuring consumer protection and enforcement of our codes/ rules (particularly Spain) but we are working hard to sort these out. Choice without protection is a recipe for disaster; (just ask those who bought homes that are now being demolished)
Why "threaten" to do withdraw - just do it! And why wait for when your contract comes to an end? Surely if it isn't worth doing, then it isn't worth doing period.
BTW, well said Northernboy.
Further to northernboys comments, I agree these posts need to be regulated/ moderated to prevent blatant spamming (I plead guilty to that charge by the way before anyone says anyhting). As for Mark's comments about being free: Membership fees have not been increased and yet the portal and HomeLink have been added as additional member benefits. That is as close to free as I believe you can get in this big bad world.
We contacted NAEA, but they won't accept memberships from agents based overseas, which leaves the public just with UK agencies promoting overseas properties. These are usually umbrella agencies offering properties from local agents willing to mark up properties, limiting choice.
Mark - NAEA membership circa £150 per year. RM fees £3900 per year. You choose.
More blatant 'plugging' by brightmove.co.uk. Rosalind, the comments facilities are being abused. It spoils the threads. Let's start a new campaign ban or delete all the promotional messages - they spoil the read!
To ensure the success of Propertylive it should be a compulsory requirement of membership to advertise it on letterheads, advertising etc. Proof that this is being complied with, costing nothing, would be to require a copy of an ad and a letterhead upon NAEA or ARLA membership renewal
I'm afraid you are being mis-leading there, Nick.
It's NOT free.
You need to be an NAEA Member and that costs money.....unless you are offering that for free too?
Rightmove IS a good site. It DOES give us all a good lift against newspaper advertising. However, now is not the time in invest £40 million in promoting its own name. £40mill equates to around £3,300 per branch. So, if rightmove lowered their tariff to £100 per month, they'd still be spending less than their £40m, but what a boast to customer loyalty, and they might actually find members INCREASING, especially as at last, theire are some serious rivals arising. £100 per month for a year would crush the would-be pretenders.
Theres power in the silent majority. Just imagine if 50% of their customer base left. It would close them down overnight.
So, if perchance you're reading this Mr Shipside, support the hand that feeds you. Cut your tariff for 6 or 12 months. That's how to keep loyalty!!
Three quarters of agents can't be wrong then! A quick plug - brightmove.co.uk also uploads to Globrix and is free for early members!
Hi All,
At INEA we have now got one if not of the best subbing systems out there. There are a few free places left. Our software now flys allowing you to market your listings, for sub agents to pick them up and drop them into their templates. New updates came through from software yesterday and its brillient. Weve also been talking to Globrix and aim to live feed to them shorty. INEA must now be the ultimate in subbing software. So for all of you older agents who valued the power of subbing out, weve replicated it to perfection.
Weve also yesterday had auto slides added to tyhe site which also has music to its background. www.inea.co.uk
We were astonished to hear a rightmove advert on Capital Radio in London yesterday, the only purpose of which appeared to be to make agents who don't use Rightmove look stupid. "How to lose clients and alienate people"! Don't forget that thebu2iness.com is free and uploads your properties to all the main portals including Globrix and Propertylive from next week.
Hugely agree with Nick, agents have to be in control of their own destinies. Although the NAEA portal comes 5 years later than I'd like to have seen it in place, its happening and there is no reason why it shouldn't become the most powerful marketing tool for all agents. Are Daltons worried yet about their commercial website? If not, they should be, PropertyLive residential should only be the start. Well done to all those in the NAEA that had the guts to enter this potentially expensive experiment. In fact the timing couldn't be better, agents are seeking low-cost solutions owing to the tightening of belts- PropertyLive will do very well indeed!
ALL AGENTS. You don't have to immediately pull off Rightmove or any other portal but get behind Property Live and you'll be on a portal that is owned by professional agents for professional agents. Stop promoting the paid-for portals, tell clients and applicants that Property Live is THE portal to be on, put the Property Live logo in your windows and on your advertising - and we'll create an independent, powerful, free advertising media that is not concerned with returns to shareholders, only in giving value to its customer base. This is a fantastic opportunity for the industry. GRAB IT!