An agent has handed in notice to Rightmove after saying that its latest price hike would mean its subscription would be almost double the amount it pays for its rent.
Complete Residential Lettings, in Coventry, is a single branch business employing three staff and paying £400 a month in rent for its premises.
Director Mark Phythian told EYE that Rightmove wanted to raise the subscription from £705 per month to £780, which was “unacceptable”.
He said: “Rightmove have monopoly of the market, think they can charge what they want and don’t listen.
“Next year, the tenant fee ban will be coming in, and like other agents, we will be cutting our cloth.
“We are already doing all our referencing in-house, whereas before we outsourced it.”
Phythian said he reads and hears a great deal about other agents’ unhappiness with Rightmove’s price rises – but says very few are actually doing anything about it.
He said:”There is a perception that agents have to be on Rightmove, but we run our own businesses and make our own decisions, and we don’t have to be dictated to by anyone.
“We must make a stand and no longer allow Rightmove to bite the hand that feeds them.”
Complete Residential Lettings, which has been in business for ten years, is still on Rightmove during the notice period but now lists on Zoopla and, since September, at OnTheMarket, where he has a free 12-month trial.
He said he had had over 150 leads so far, and was “pleasantly surprised”.
Another single-office agent to have quit Rightmove is Scott Bainbridge, in Cumbria, which was covered in EYE.
Proprietor Iain Bainbridge said: “Following our rather public delisting from Rightmove we have not lost any instructions to date.
“I am relieved to have got rid of a £1,200 pcm expense and currently have a record number of sales progressing.”
Comments (44)
How things have changed, it wasn’t that long ago that if you mentioned OTM you would be jumped upon from high and as for even considering not using RM, let alone actually leaving them … shot at dawn. Nice to see common sense prevail at last and agents looking in the mirror and saying, “who is a mug now RM”
You’ve only got yourselves to blame, for years you have promoted RM by providing vendors with RM branded brochures, comparable lists, literature and in verbal communication… “ Mr Vendor we will advertise your property on RM”… well stop and use OTM, I have OTM on every bit of my literature, and promote them on every opportunity I can, I’ve just had new folders printed and supply all my clients with them, on the front it has a massive OTM logo, I don’t mention RM and if asked if I’m on RM I say “ who are they?”. Educate your clients, if you get an email enquiry, reply to them with (we noticed your enquiry came through XX you can see all our properties on OTM and many agents list their properties with OTM 24 or 48 hours before any other portal..insert a link to your properties on OTM. And OTM supply a link from their site direct to yours no other portal does that. My OTM enquires well exceed any other enquires. It’s your business promote it. If every agents in your area we’re to drop RM, people will search the www and still find your properties. If you value your traditional estate agent business protect it before the online agent steal it. I believe RM will eventually become a online only agent portal after all it seems they get it cheaper than anyone else.
I’m off Rightmove at the end of the month handled my notice in end of October still not had a call however have had a statement of account email to me 🙂
Being fairly new to this side of the property industry, it seems to me that, like many industries, portals of all kinds are being created to bleed the traditional style of business out of existence in order to consolidate into fewer and fewer “big players”. I expect the usual suspects are there somewhere and of course banks are overflowing with cash they can’t lend.
The only time I see results is when I spend an awful amount of time on Google Adwords and Analytics but the return is better than spending all my money on RM. For a one man band, like me, to be quoted in excess of £750 p.m. is a not very funny joke!
Just bump your fees up, we charge 2% plus vat and don’t worry about rightmove fees. Spend some time leaning how to increase your fees, don’t match the online clowns. Before you say it, we are up against 0.5% and 0.75% and 0.8% locally but we still command 2% because we’ve learnt how to. It’s in your head if you think you can’t. If you think you can or think you can’t, either way you will be right and the results will be what you expect them to be. Add value to your brand, don’t be weak, stay strong and make some money!
This is becoming so farcical. It is also a real eyeopener seeing all the variations in fees. It is disgusting! All these extra features are an absolute waste of money, like one poster said if everyone is using it then you no longer stand out. Another thing, someone mentioned about using “emerging new portals” well I agree. But I would like the new portals to be a bit more innovative than what we currently have along with a guarantee of no price increases and “be more with the times” so I get value out of what we are paying in to. There is no such thing as a free to list portal , unless it is a limited offer as they wouldn’t be able to sustain it. No business can (or should be expected to) survive on fresh air!
I get annoyed when people talk about portal visitor numbers. This means diddlysquat. A techie once told me that these numbers are a waste of time. The visitor numbers you see on third party sites that report stats do not correlate with what the actual server captures for a website apparently. He said the server stats are the accurate logs and they can show you what accounts for robots and crawlers – RM, Z and OTM should let us see un-tampered versions of those stats! Apparently visitor numbers can be a mishmash of robots, crawlers as well as regular users so the millions reported shouldn’t be an indicator of whether or not to join them. It is difficult to know exactly how good portals are at generating the leads.
The only real indicator for me would be the people who say they have just seen the property on portal ‘X’ and would like to arrange a viewing and then for that to end with a sale – that would be how I determine our success at least. Plus we often get none-responders who inquired via portal so I have questioned the legitimacy of those and whether they are sent to keep us happy in thinking we are getting all these leads from the portal!
An agent I was talking to a few weeks back said they had signed up to some xml feeder that charges them around £15 a month to send their listings to virtually every portal and classified both here and internationally and it even submits to Facebook. For any agent that gets a lot of inquires from outside UK (I suppose London agents?) this can be great. My point with this is using this xml tool we could send our listings to all these “emerging new portals” at no extra cost or effort to us and then sit and wait to see which one generates the most inquiries. I believe the xml tool provider takes care of setup and it doesn’t require any access to our website or database. If anyone knows the name of the tool please post it, or I can ask the person I spoke to for it if there is interest.
We are currently paying £762.50 plus VAT as single office listed since RM began, which is structured as £720.00 core membership, free Brand Plus Sales and £42.50 for Premium Listing Sales.
Been advised that core membership will increase to £870 in January with 5 premium listings FOC but letter then goes on to say if we keep our Essential package and product mix its £912.50 per month, so clearly the 5 FOC premium listings are in addition to what we have now. We can also have 50% discount on advertising products.
We could swop to enhanced package at £1325 and get £1600 worth of product plus inclusive branding.
Have to seriously consider options, but quick. One thing definitely sure about, Premium listing not very high value as nearly all of our local agents have it too, so may stand out more not having it!
Very helpful seeing what others are paying.
So your Core Membership is increasing by more than 20% – how can they justify that?
Hopefully the on-line only agents are also getting similar increases.
Good question, but rep was not very informative when I asked how much they are paying and on what basis.
Rightmove have long since succumbed to that basic human trait called greed. It will eventually finish them off and good riddance to them.
Okay lets agree we all think portals are evil and charge too much. I don’t think there is any argument about this.
But here is a novel idea, Instead of moaning about the increases and threatening to walk away (we will not, lets be honest) – How about as an industry we actually try and increase our fees.
Just an extra 0.25% each instruction or 1% on fully managed can make a big difference to your profitability.
An interesting exercise is to list the number of local buyers who contact you via RM/Z/OTM and ask them where they first saw the property.
You will be surprised how many saw your board and then searched for the details online (probably by typing “Property for sale, London Road,York” into Google!). In other words, serious buyers will find the property – even if they have to phone you.
It would probably require the top 2 agents to come off RM in an area to have an impact – others would quickly follow.
From another fellow Coventry Agent. I admire your bravery and the decision to do something. We too have been having endless discussions over RM or Zoopla or both or indeed OTM. RM can on occasions depending where you are be the cost of a Junior employee. @LongInTheTooth i suppose it would depend on what you are paying now or indeed how long you will be leaving them. Like mentioned above i wish there was a listing of what agents in different pay for sales and lettings separate so we can all make our minds up on the value we do or dont get. Of course this would depend on the length of service etc, but time and time again you see comments on PIE of agents that have been with RM since its inception and still they get horrendous price hikes!
Here is a thought for the day …….. Who owns RightMove? ………… Who will benefit if agents disappear from the market, because agents can’t afford fee’s? …………. Has RM been operating a cartel? ……………. Is RM allowing Private Sellers through the backdoor with on-line only agents?
Has anybody had any experience of how RM penalize you if you leave then return?
LongInTheTooth75,
We dropped the sales for a few months and then returned.
When we returned our fees increased as we had lost the ‘loyalty discount’. We had only dropped sales for 2 months but kept lettings during this period. The result was around a 20% increase in fees !
I think this was an excuse to increase revenue and I am sure that the Account Managers are simply paid bonuses on increased revenue/additional products sold. It is also clear that there is no consistency in fees; particularly for the smaller agents; also being the ones that are least likely to be able to afford the high fees and ever increasing prices.
RM’s only interest is revenue and not assisting businesses when they need to.
The number of agents leaving RM seems to be ever increasing, and, when a number of agents in an area stop advertising, slowly people will simply follow where the properties are being advertised.
Re account managers at rightmove, I know for a fact that they have claw back penalties if you/we downgrade, so if you’re a rightmove account manager and it’s pay day there will be a column on the payslip detailing what’s been deducted. Hit them there, basic only, won’t affect rightmove itself massively immediately but the drip drip drip on staff morale.
Sorry, but rightmove set the tone for the game.
When we talked to Rightmove earlier in the year, they wanted us to pay more than we generated in monthly revenue to list our few properties on their portal.
Quite. It’s disgusting. Listing charges should be realistic and should reflect the number of listings. In the old days of newspaper ‘listing’, we paid only for the space we used, when we used it.
That’s disgusting.
I will be canvassing my clients views for a temporary protest ‘strike’ in December. My Rightmove charges are 15% higher than my rent.
All nine of them? (Chortle).
What has how many listings got to do with anything Quickbrit?
Our Rightmove Subscription is exactly double our rent. I came off rightmove between 2015-2017, and clients didn’t care at first. Sadly my competitors started mailing instructions with rightmove facts and it did start to impact my business. I pay £1000 plus VAT for a basic package. I have been warned it will increase. I took a stand on my own locally. It needs more than 1.
Hi Paul. Completely agree and your post somewhat confirms my fear. There will be no short term impact but once the other agents cotton on, or you have a house go 3 to 4 weeks with no interest then the sharks will bite. I suspect the next 6 months are the absolute worst time to be making a stand alone.
This is the bit which puzzles me, coming off when the market is easy, is surely the better time to do this. Whilst cash flow is better then and I get we don’t feel quite as strapped for cash, the market will actually help prove the point a portal is not required, instead we seem to make these noises when cash flow is tough and unfortunately that usually means the vendors are expecting as much exposure as possible and are fooled in to thinking the portals are what sells the property.
Such a shame your competitors don’t get it, but half the time it is a Branch Manager who is not paying the bills and probably less sensitive to the bottom line debate than us the business owners.
Abolute hats off for being the one who tried it in your area.
Paul, for most people it is natural to fear change. Your experience is to be expected, that other agents will see an opportunity.
It is easy to become complacent when relying so heavily on RM leads, and the ones from other portals, especially when in the business for some time; been there, done it before, why can’t the profession be more professional by not resorting to such tactics!
Treat coming off RM as an opportunity, revisit/remake ones business plan, review ones objectives, Those agents touting properties that are no longer on RM are also fair game for letting their clients know that portals are not the be all and end all of selling property.
Remember – People buy from People
Hi Peter. Not so sure this is Agents relying on RM leads! I think this is more Vendors believing being on RM is the answer and other agents who are weak enough to promo “if your agent is not on RM you have a problem”.
RM has simply levelled the playing field (a touch) for the weak agents.
Problem is… if and I say IF Paul was in my area and I whole heartedly support Pauls views, whilst he is “revisiting he business plan, I will be revisiting the property he has on his books, letting them know… Paul simply cannot afford RM (even though we know Paul, just chooses not to) and to not be on the number 1 stop shop for new house hunters in your area, you could be missing a sale whilst the savvy agents ensure the leads never get to Paul.
Paul, Peter, I am on your side, agree 100% with the sentiment as I have said before, we need to tell buyers about houses, so they stop thinking it was RM which found them their new home (let them remember when it is time to sell on, they had a call from an agent saying, we have the perfect home) but as Paul says, he alone just got targeted by the others. This will continue until I think 50% of agents come off in an area…. including some of the strongest and then (not even 100%) half the agents are changing the record.
I’m not on RM, I decided against it right from the start of my business three and half years ago. Their fees are too much for a single branch independent business to sustain. I had a quote at the start from RM and requested another quote after a year of trading and this had increased by 20%. Needles to say as I am quite stubborn, I did not take up their offer…
The proof is in the pudding as they say, I have the lions share of the market in this area with a reputation of selling houses quickly with a low fixed fee. 🙂 I use Zoopla, OnTheMarket and social media- It works! Clients love low fees- Fact.
Having worked with all portals in my previous experience within the industry I have found that Zoopla and OnTheMarket provide higher quality applicant leads. My rental properties in our area will generate leads as soon as the board goes up or through social media marketing.
Be brave and reduce your outgoings.
In Ian Wilson’s article yesterday he clearly stated that Ewemove covered the cost of both Rightmove and Zoopla for £1000 per month. It is clear that the rest of us have been ripped off by Rightmove for years. They have milked high street agents and then offered far better terms to various call centre operations and developers.
The continued use of Rightmove by any of us is the equivalent of Turkeys voting for Xmas, commercial suicide.
We have come off in Liverpool also. £2.1k plus VAT per month was unsustainable. We are keeping our lettings listings with them for now, but will guage this also.
whats needed by a large proportion of you is to stop talking around the edges and show some backbone, if peeps start saying how much it’s costing for rm then others will submit their costs so you have some comparable and then the discrepancies will start to emerge and this will either help you decide to leave or negotiate a better deal (most unlikely but hell what choices are there) MIne is £845 pcm about to go up but we are leaving.
I said on a previous PIE article where lots of agents were ranting about RM that we would be handing in our notice to RM.
WE HAVE GIVEN OUR NOTICE
Well done to the fellow Coventry agent. No properties No Rightmove; maybe RM should realise. Same thing happened to the local papers; Coventry Evening Telegraph. Now they are chasing Agents because many have withdrawn from advertising with them.
Agents should get behind emerging portals with free to list business models. The House Shop, PropertyHeads, FindProperly (can anyone tell me of any others?).
These sites have 1m visitors a month, not massive, but it’s something (i.e. leads) for nothing. And anything that reduces the RM stranglehold has got to be a good thing right?
Not sure I agree Proper Tea & Meds.
Once these empty trains get a head of steam, there is no stopping them. Free becomes “Your clients expect to be on them, so now we are charging and you end up with a RM eventually”
One Portal Required, perhaps two… at a push, should one offer a few extra features that end users prefer.
I would love to hear of a No.1 or No.2 Sales Agent come off, note their stock when they do and see how they are fairing in 6 months.
Brilliant job by Complete Resi Lettings for taking a stand mind you.
Talk of “Not lost an instruction since” would love to know how people are measuring this and over what time period. Is it, still listing at 75% Val to Listing ratio, but they are now doing 10 valuations not 50? or still listing as many units 6 months down the line, but is this 15 plus? or 3 and 4 listings a month? what numbers are we talking?
We need to get off all portals. Is next on Amazon? is halfords on Amazon?
We are just sheep giving our property to a rightmove god.
That God then allows the devil that is pay any way to kill you…
Bless you all
Saw what you did there, PTaM… almost a good try.
Thing is, when you wrap 5h!t in Christmas paper it looks exciting… but it still smells.
When you wrap it in more 5h!t… nobody can tell the difference.
How d’you get a deal like that from RM? I think we are knocking nearly 2k a month now. Single branch.
With all the smoke and mirrors or just “essential” package? I’m at £950 for the latter.
That’s cheaper than most single office clients now
And yet still cheaper than I pay for the basic package.
‘Rage against the machine’
Are we customers or hostages as someone quoted at a recent industry conference!
Make a stand.
No Property, No Rightmove.
Absolutely no reason why a letting agent needs to be on rightmove. Zoopla is fine.
We get no business from rightmove in the form of valuations.
Houses rent themselves, landlords want an office , so they can sit and moan at you .
Simples .