People seeing Rightmove adverts were so disbelieving of the claims that they complained to the Advertising Standards Authority.
The adverts, on the London underground, claimed that every second someone contacts an estate agent about a home on Rightmove.
One poster said: “Every second someone in the world gets married and every second someone contacts an estate agent about a home on Rightmove.”
A second poster said: “Every second a bee flaps its wings 230 times and every second someone contacts an estate agent about a home on Rightmove.”
Three people challenged whether someone really did contact an agent every second about a property listed on Rightmove.
Rightmove told the ASA that there were 31.5m seconds in a year, and that it received 42m leads annually, equating to 1.3 enquiries every second.
The ASA did not uphold the complaints.
Comments (21)
They were telling us some years back that we had 30k views a month. I asked how come I didn’t need a bucket of water to cool down the telephone.
‘Views for vanity, genuine monetisable leads for sanity’
If only Rightmove believed in the mantra; ‘quality is better than quantity’.
If Rightmove have 20,000 agents this is suggesting each agent gets on average 6 new leads every single day? That doesn’t sound quite right. Despite only half the population being privately housed apparently 2/3rds of the population are making enquiries about properties to buy or rent? That’s mad! Effectively what’s being claimed is that 3 people in the average household of 4 is making the same enquiry.
Although the claim has been upheld by ASA it might be worth the editor getting a meaningful breakdown of the numbers; does 1 lead sent to 10 agents count as 1 lead or 10?
Newsflash: people send enquiries for more than one property
That’s why I suggested the editor get the details of the claim. Perhaps you’re suggesting applicants buy or rent more than one property at a time?
We now need to find out if a lead is 1 applicant who will result in 1 fee or is a lead is 10 property enquiries that will result in 1 fee. What is a lead?
No, obviously not. I’m suggesting applicants enquire to view more than one property at a time.
A lead is a lead, not a fee (i.e. sale). Have you heard of a marketing funnel? In what world is a lead a completed sale?
But that’s the point I am trying to establish, one applicant passed to 20,000 agent is 1 (one) single fee opportunity not 20,000
The claim turns out to be uncertain so ASA had no authority to say it’s fine. It needs looking into and clarifying
But the advert says a contact (lead) every second, not “a single fee opportunity every second”.
Anyway, have a nice day!
Sorry for the reasons above there is ambiguity. 2/3rds of the population are not contacting estate agents. To even think they are is daft
Sending same buyer/tenant lead to 10 agents is Z and OM territory and it’s how they try to compete with RM on volume… RM don’t do this anymore as they don’t need to.
But, your maths stacks up a bit more realistically if you consider most buyers and tenants contact more than 1 agent about property to buy or rent unless they buy/rent the first thing they enquire about.
they definitely can’t all be great leads though (although my experience is they’re a shed load better than OTM & Z’s)
Figures only OTM and Zoopla can dream of!
Out of all the things we can complain about this seems one of the more trivial matters.
Seeing as I sold a house 4 months ago and paid a fee of just under £11.5k it seem’s like the fee’s you lot pay are good value.
Sucker169…
Which agent sold your Cave?
Can you move over to the left a little, I can feel you under my shoe as I walk.
Hi onthemarket.
You caused this.
Where are you?
Time everyone dumped o.m. so I can go back to zoopla and come off rightmove.
Absolute shocker.
And all these enquiries are serious too, contact number
00000 000000
£176m revenue expected for 2019. That’s £5.58 per second. Nice. For them.
So, any EA paying more than £5.58 per RM lead needs to re-negotiate their monthly fees.
RM will spend about £100m buying back their own shares in 2019 – at least the shareholders love them !
……every second Rightmove overcharges its Subscribers.
Busy are we GPL, good to see you woke up early to post a comment on here.
Toys, Pram….
Yes Sucker169… I was heading off to my work just after 7am.
If you want to know what it is to work hard & be a real Estate Agent, you may slither along under the sole of my shoe, best place for you.