Rightmove dominate the UK property portal sector in market share, by customer numbers, website visitors and in revenue terms. But they might want to take note of data that may indicate that new competitors are quite a threat to their cosy position.

Because if the speed at which a new portal gains traction is any indication of future success, the sector could be in for a shake-up and, frankly, not before time where the need for competition is concerned. More competition means that the incumbents must work harder at their relationships with their customers (you) and in innovating user experience and at better value. That means greater opportunities for agents to earn revenue from the portals rather than being at their financial behest and should lead to slower subscription cost growth – or even reductions. That’s the beauty of free market economics in that the fat have to get fit and the fittest survive.

For two decades or so the portal landscaoe in Britain has been characterised by Rightmove and to a lesser extent, ZPG. Rightmove have a stock market value of £5.6bn and ZPG were sold to US investment house Silver Lake for £2.2bn in 2018. Not bad for second place.

Yet with their success has followed frustration on the part of their estate agency customers. Hostility even. Why? Because many say that as the portals have become so big and have overshadowed estate agents, they have become more distant, more expensive and rather arrogant in their attitude toward agents.

This in turn has provided an opportunity for a third major portal. And a fourth.

Hence OnTheMarket, son of Agents Mutual, was born in January 2015 and with much promise given its ownership pedigree of Savills, Strutt  & Parker, Knight Frank et al. Yet despite this provenance, maybe even because of it, it quickly fell into a life of disappointment and wayward behaviour much like the spoiled child of a busy millionaire parent. It also became less trusted than Rightmove and that’s certainly a low bar to limbo under. This may be set to change though of course under new leader Jason Tebb, untainted by the Springett era.

Room for one more? You might feel that three portals is enough and I know that many of you do. After all, the point of a portal is to aggregate and it seems kind of odd for there to be multiple aggregators – it rather defeats the object. But then I’d steer you back to my point in the second paragraph because in this instance, for you more is more – more portals equal more benefit to agents. Why else do you think that Alex Chesterman worked obsessively to consolidate the sector into a handful of players rather than have lots roam dangerously around him as he tried to beat Rightmove.

In any case, sensing the prospect of success as a consequence of doing things differently and as they are famous for, the Bruce brothers launched Boomin in April this year. I won’t get into the ins and outs of which portal is the ‘best’ or which one is truly on the agents’ side (at last) as that’s subject to much supposition and opinion and will only tie this publication’s commentators into knots. But, what the traction data does highlight is the incredible difference in speed at which each portal has been adopted by agents. Do first impressions count? Does early adoption indicate a propensity for future dominance?

Boomin recently announced that they had already reached the milestone of 6,000 customers. That’s one-third of that of Rightmove, a 20-year-old business.

But how does this compare to the other players as they grew from scratch?

Portal Launch Date 6000 Reached Months Taken To Reach
Rightmove 2000 2004 48
Zoopla Jan 2008 2012* 48
On The Market Jan 2015 2018 41
Boomin Apr 2021 June 2021 2

 

*Zoopla agent numbers are sketchy until their public listing in 2014 (15,858 agent numbers). However, Zoopla revenue in their financial year was £13.8m according to their accounts and their ARPA approximately £200 therefore it can be comfortably estimated that at the end of 2011 they had under 6000 agent customers).

The data suggests that Boomin are the fastest growing property portal ever launched in the UK – by a mile.

This may be for several reasons including the appeal of Boomin’s innovative approach, its ‘agent first’ attitude, or something else. But it doesn’t appear that it’s just because they are not charging agents for their first 12 months – because all their competitors have utilised a similar incentive. Indeed, On The Market still do to an extent.

No other property portal has had such a successful launch, and all sit way behind Boomin on early customer traction.

Yes, the spotlight now is on whether Boomin continue their growth trajectory and if it’s done at the expense of their competitors’ numbers. And then, how many free accounts they convert into paying subscribers.

But remember that Boomin’s 6,000 agent threshold was reached without much of their marketing war-chest being spent yet and it appears that they have much, much more to deploy. In contrast, Rightmove, ZPG and OTM all spent hundreds of millions to get to where Boomin have started at.

This weekend I watched Richard Branson finally launch himself into space for a few minutes having spent billions of dollars over 20 years doing so. NASA (and ok, Russia), the first to command the outer atmosphere before him, spent even longer doing so and even more dollars and were, for quite a while, the ultimate space agency.

If NASA are Rightmove in this scenario and ZPG are Virgin Galactic, just watch what comes next from Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. They’ll spend much, much less time reaching space relatively speaking, and will likely long outlive the previously dominant institutions because they will be properly commercialised entities – having watched, learned, innovated and then gained early traction fast.

Astronaut or astranought. Who is now set to win the race in this space?

Russell Quirk is Co-founder of ProperPR, the specialist property PR agency, a veteran UK estate agent and media commentator.