A City analyst has said he ‘only’ expects Rightmove’s next set of results to be in line with forecasts.
Rightmove is due to post its results for the first half of this year towards the end of this month.
William Packer, of Exane BNP Paribas, said that for the last five years, Rightmove has beaten forecasts in every single set of results.
However, this time he expects Rightmove to deliver results that are ‘only’ in line with expectations.
One reason is that he is forecasting agency membership to turn negative, and drop by 1%.
Packer says that “continued” closures of traditional agents are not being offset by hybrids.
In addition, he sees hybrid share gains slowing.
Overall Packer forecasts Rightmove to report 9% revenue growth on July 27.
He also says that this year will be the toughest for the industry since 2013, with sales transactions down 15%, uncertainty around Brexit and the forthcoming lettings fee ban.
Comments (18)
What Robert May is saying is fair. To use the acronym of the milennials FOMO (for those like me who only discovered its meaning recently its fear of missing out), most of the Rightmove pitched is based on what your competitors do and making you worry you are missing out, and ‘how this marvelous stat on my Powerpoint presentation shows how many more people engage and stay longer if you just pay for this’. Exit stage left with another inflation busting subscription rise.
I do understand if you are selling a property that has many similar looking competitors, things like Featured property or equivalent will help your listing stand out. But if you are sole agents and the images are strong, the buyers/tenants are looking for a house and will look fairly thoroughly and find it. If you use low standard photography, rest assured no amount of features will help, its just like putting lipstick on a gorilla. Oh yes, get the price right in the first place and see what happens. Don’t let the portals bully you and as an industry that is supposed to be great negotiators…negotiate!
I’d say put all the cash from featured ads in a pot and divvy it out equally to all the staff if they prove they can sell houses without them.
I would urge everyone to look deep into your back office portal stats, and learn everything you can about them. They can tell you an awful lot about what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong with the internet marketing. I don’t believe the portals sell a property…you do…but using them properly can generate far more interest.
Happy to talk to anyone about what we do, and swop ideas if other agents want to.
Three rules
#1Don’t get wrapped up in the stats, listen to your Rightmove recorded calls and be really honest with how you are dealing with enquiries.
#2 Know your client People people people
#3 Your buyers become your sellers
Its not so much the stats but the trends I use….happy to discuss in more detail if you are open to new ideas.
in@agentv.co.uk
still no news from #onthemarket about the great rightmove switch off… is anyone actually working there?
I would be surprised if there are any agents reporting these kind of results ( % ) . Maybe its time for Rightmove to think about their relationship with agents in these tough times.
Now most of the #portaljuggling has been stopped and those that continue are easily monitored and reported Featured properties are simply a waste of money many agents haven’t got.
I’d suggest cutting back to basic listing only is probably the easiest way for agents to make an immediate saving of money they really should not be spending.
I’m not suggesting any agent should stop listing with any portal but I am suggesting agents understand the cost and return on every penny they spend.
“Are we on Rightmove? yes we are!”
Do I do featured properties? ( how many times have you been asked that?) No we don’t, the role of the portals is not to sell property, that’s my job. The portals simply introduce applicants to our agency so we can properly establish then satisfy their requirements, I did a check of our register, we have xx applicants looking for a home like this right now. If one of those don’t buy, then we can see if there’s someone we don’t know about on the portals. The serious buyers are on our books already!….
“Oh no!!! Robert May is making my job as a rep 10x harder!!! Robert May is telling everyone to cut back to a basic listing and telling them how to do it”
You’ll be fine go to the rep trainer and ask them how to overcome this as objection. If they say “tell the agent their hits and page views are down” tell them Robert May wants to know how many hits there are to a sale and how come if traffic keeps going up sales are reducing by 2% each year.
I appreciate you might not like me or my posts but this is an industry forum where it seems very few service suppliers want to engage with agents. None of the public facing Rummage4 team will post under a disguising moniker and will be judged on their opinions, manners and knowledge so guess what, we’ve just raised the bar again!
Hi Robert
Totally get what you are saying, but do you not feel that Premium Displays etc give us a chance to promote our brand ? Most vendors I go out to have had a look on Rightmove at property in there area, to see what similar are going for, even if they are not looking to buy on. Banners etc put my brand to the front, premium displays highlight good quality pics etc. I feel it gives us a better chance of getting called out if we havent had any contact with them previously. Well thats what the Rightmove Rep tells me Anyway.
Interested in your thoughts.
We used to have the Rightmove premium package or whatever they call it costing us just over £2,500pcm – we had the premium listings, featured property, banner adverts, the whole lot.
We pulled the plug twelve months ago and went back to their basic package for sales and lettings with 3 premium listing credits a month. This more than halved our bill.
When the Rightmove Rep comes he tells me and shows me on his graph that our “brand awareness” has dropped through the floor but the diary? Just the same as it was, we’ve noticed no difference to the amount of appraisals, viewings or general interest but the bank account is a lot better off every month.
Interesting to hear, thanks for the response. Do you mind me asking if you are a market leader ?
No it’s fine, no problem at all. No we’re not a market leader, we have a decent sized lettings department and a small – medium sized sales department.
We were just spending far too much on advertising in general so decided to have a cull a year ago and it’s the best thing we’ve done in recent years. Not only is the bank balance better it’s also been a real insight that we clearly didn’t need this really expensive advertising.
Every time the Rightmove rep comes back to see me he’s very keen for us to take up more extras. When I say to him I’ve noticed no loss of business he doesn’t really have an answer other than “but look at how much better your competitors are doing” (whips out graph and spreadsheet).
As Robert May has mentioned, I think a lot of the spending and packages are bought into out of fear rather than, do we really need this? Will this actually achieve what we want?
Yep, guess i am a victim of FOMO, ive always found it hard to get a handle on where incoming cold call valuations come from, as in people we havent had direct dealings with. When we ask its very often ” I am getting three and just thought of you” so something is working but not sure what.
Maybe its time to grow some b&lls and stop feeding Rightmove.
Who are you promoting your brand to? Which of the *** million hits are your audience? Quite a lot will be your competitors looking at all the cash you’re spending and deciding to spend it too, they spend it and then you look at their spend and feel happy you are spending as much as them.
I don’t advertise on the telly but spend a huge amount of time monitoring and engaging where my potential customers are looking; early morning Eye and twitter. I have given myself a cost free, other than time, advantage over every other service supplier who doesn’t do it because of time or because they don’t have industry knowledge to go toe to toe belly to belly with me. I put myself out there, fight hard when I’m attacked and let my potential customers work out if the message is consistent, can be trusted and can be respected. I can buy business or I can earn it I know which one I can afford!
#local agency is far easier than that, doing stuff in your local community and spending the money there is far, more targeted and effective than being in an arms race spend with your competitor.
You stop and watch them stop, one of you has to and by doing it first you have the financial upper hand.
Thanks for the reply, measured and thoughtful as always.
We have lots of ideas for generating new business, many of them gained from talking to other agents. Happy to share with other agents who are open to new ideas,
in@agentv.co.uk
We tried all the products that Rightmove suggested and spent thousands over the years because they kept putting a spin to the product they were offering/upselling.
We then set landing pages to monitor clicks through and over a 6 month period we received 9 click throughs. This was on an advert they had designed for maximum response.
The only product worth having is the local valuation request service, which has a waiting list of many years. I was on the list for 10 years as they don’t rotate agents.
We ditched rightmove from the beginning of the year and are saving over £1500 per month.
Our profits have increased due to our increased fee. We are now working with select motivated buyers and sellers who we feel will not waste our time.