The boss of challenger portal OnTheMarket has thrown down the gauntlet to Rightmove, saying “it is no surprise” that agents are deserting it.
Ian Springett said yesterday that Rightmove’s “whopping” profit margin of 75.9% had been maintained by price hikes to agents.
Its average revenue per advertiser per month is up £83 to £1,088 according to Rightmove’s latest results, for last year.
In an assertive email to OTM agents yesterday, Springett said that most, over 73%, of Rightmove’s revenue comes from agents’ fees.
Rightmove agency numbers last year slipped by 981 to 16,347, while OTM’s rose by almost the same number to 12,530.
Furthermore, said Springett in his email, Rightmove is producing fewer leads for agents than it used to, while OTM is producing more.
In 2015, Rightmove produced 210 leads per agent per month, while OTM produced 23. Last year, Rightmove produced 170 leads, while OTM produced 88 – a number which rose to 126 in January, it claims.
Springett also says that Rightmove’s leads are working out at 16 per £100, while £100 gets OTM agents 27 leads.
He says that OTM agents pay an average of £331 per month, less than a third of Rightmove’s average cost.
Springett said: “It is no surprise that the decline in the number of agents listing with Rightmove has accelerated. In 2018 they were down 298 offices compared with 2017, with the greatest reduction – 257 offices – in the second half of 2018.
“In 2019 Rightmove lost a further 981 offices, of which 560 were in the first half and 421 in the second half.”
Springett asked his agents “to help us help you”, including that they support the new & exclusive proposition, which means that properties are listed on OTM 48 hours before any other portal.
OTM has also announced renewed TV advertising as of this week, with slots in programmes including Crufts, Gogglebox and Midsomer Murders.
Comments (40)
The only people losing out by not using Rightmove are the poor buyers having to look for a home using OTM!
Why don’t you all use Zoopla instead?
I find it fascinating that many agents judge the quality of the portal by the number of leads …. yet hardly any talk abiut them looking back at every sale and let and working backwards to see where the lead orginally came from.
i think if you could be bothered to take a full day out and do that for all your 2019 – you will be surprised beyond belief
Lets call it as it as…… 3 Portals = 3 Tins of Virtual Beans (no taste test required – it’s just feckin’ online ads …….really …….it is!).
Rightmove Beans – £1000plus
Zoopla Beans – £500plus
OTM Beans – £350plus
We DON’T need all 3 Tins totalling nearly £2000 plus Vat per month. The difference between them quite frankly is negligible.
As much as I hate to say it after the OTMV1 debacle …….the choice is kicking us in the head!
OTM? ……CONFRONT RIGHTMOVE PROPERLY, TAKE THEM HEAD-ON AND STOP PLAYING AT IT.
ZOOPLA? …….GOODBYE – Always the Bridesmaid!
RIGHTMOVE ……OVERPRICED/OVERATED/OVERSTAYED THEIR WELCOME!
OTM – openly commit to the UK Estate Agency Industry. Revise your Terms/Contract. Invite every single non-OTM UK Estate & Letting Agent to Join on preferential terms for 2 Years ……otherwise, STOP wasting your time and ours!
OTM will be over soon, no cash , penny stock, agents not paying for the services. They are desperate. I will be sticking with Zoopla, good value for money and I’m not worried about them flopping in the next 12 – 18 months.
Whatever the question is, OTM is not the answer.
Ian still flogging this dead horse?
It’s very much alive and providing us with excellent leads – you should give it a try, it has come on leaps and bounds.
I do advertise on it, along with RM and Z.
OTM? Are they still going?
The last groan of a dying beast.
Sorry I am so late to join this morning’s discussion.
Along with the news of Corona Virus, Rightmove’s profit margins, a faltering Boris Bounce and Robert’s comments that agents won’t be told to leave RM, I need to have a lie down and open a bottle.
“mmmm” tells us he is going to “use his head” as he claims to get a good return from Rightmove.yet seemingly uses Zoopla and OTM as well. Am I missing something ? Can anyone (apart from shareholders) support the annual price hikes ? What agent with any type of head would agree to that ?
In the context of the race to the bottom on fees, driven by cross-selling referral monkeys who conveniently forget the maxim of “acting in the client’s best interest at all times” few agents can afford to see such rising costs.
We should all walk away from RM, but I fear Robert has it right.
There really is no point leaving Rightmove, the duopoly has been broken and there are competitive forces beginning to play out.
Rightmove will want to protect the £5.7b market capitalisation as best they can and here is where it gets interesting and why rather than having a lie down you should be hopping about like Grandpa Joe, full of glee.
A lot people accuse me of taking my time and most do not give me ANY credit for what rummage4 has achieved so far. We forced a change on Rightmove that now seems so insignificant it beggars belief but it has halted the disruption of agency to the point where £5.11 per share for one disruptor has fallen 7% below what we were laughed at for suggesting was a more realistic 94p. In addition to that several of the portal enabled disruptors no longer exist, under the same shouty ownership or posing the same threat they once did and that is down to one very well documented change to Rightmove.
I don’t mind the stuff I have had to endure along the way, they denial and anger is a classic part of change management the good news is that change is here, it is being accepted and it is down to Rightmove to respond. if they don’t the 83% reduction in one company’s share price might just repeat itself.
Here’s the thing- that something? I know what it is,I know its worth about £350,000 per agency branch and I know that £350k belongs to agents not the shareholders of one of its suppliers.
Robert
I think the issue is that you tend to talk in riddles and have for a while promised great change but nothing seems to come of it. Perhaps you would like to share with us what the forced change you made Rightmove make was. Rather than riddles again. I suspect I won’t get a straight answer or even an answer at all but I would like to give you an opportunity.
For the record I am not a RM customer and have no real interest in whether you ‘disrupt’ the portal market or not frankly. I simply find it odd that for some years now you have been threatening to unleash a revolution that is always just around the corner.
Yours
ARC
Adding the date listed data to Rightmove property pages which stopped the majority of portal juggling.
The portals were being gamed by a lot of agents ; the Windows 3.11/98 generation ‘list’ technology used to produce a list of properties on the portals meant that being at the top of the list was important. Taking properties off the market and re-adding them, changing the price by more than 2% or adding multiple copies of the same property meant some agents could keep their listings on page 1 of the portals all the time by gaming the system.
Identifying and evidencing the 14 methods agents were using to game the portals and how gaming breached both CPR and BPR meant 95% of it was stopped either by a specific change to the date added to Rightmove field or an enforcement of the 14 week rule
That meant agents who no longer had their listings artificially on page one of the portals lost the advantage they had given themselves, along with the claims they were making about their sales performance which were being manipulated by their gaming.
What you ought to understand is that although I have been building a system for 5 years a lot of what you are describing as my threats to unleash a revolution have been a documentation of progress of a system capable of challenging the duopoly
Correcting the land registry data set wasn’t something I expected to do, tackling portal juggling wasn’t something I’d planned. Enduring a cyber attack every working day for 30 months was a frustration could have done without so you’ll understand why things might have taken a little longer than I expected or wanted
Using language appropriate to an industry forum isn’t talking in riddles. Wherever I’ve been asked for an explanation I’ve always given it up to the point of being trolled
Thank you Robert that all makes sense and credit to you.
Your previous post was a riddle as it alluded to truths and actions which you have now made clear so again thank you.
You’re welcome.
For the record we have begun to roll out rummage4 now. We are just testing out how to scale up data feeds from a sprodiac one or two for testing, to multiple offices. We are also working out how to tackle random issues with things like Google mapping
Where CRM providers are supportive of what we’re trying to do for mutual customers we don’t have any problems whereas others are being obstructive to the point where they will simply lie.
There have been a few things that haven’t worked out there are things that have been changed by technology changes- but as I sit here we have two complimentary products ready to receive agent’s listings.
Rightmove will die.
It just doesn’t realise that…… yet.
Pity that OTM were the only portal not to bother to attend the recent Guild conference to spread the message. Missed opportunity by Springett.
“No surprise that agents don’t like RM business model”, says man who plans to copy RM’s business model.
It isn’t the money!
At £6billion market capitalisation with less than £300m of the company’s value being made up of revenue that is coming from it’s Agents and builders Rightmove could afford to give every agent and developer a free subscription in order to retain what is making it worth £6b [£6,000m of income, brand, goodwill and something minus £300m income is still £5.7b worth of brand, goodwill and something]
It isn’t the ARPA, it isn’t the profit margin. agents are leaving Rightmove because they can, because they have to or they have ceased trading.
As not all those who are no longer with Rightmove have ceased trading Rightmove, their investors and their competition have to very quickly work out what the something is. Rightmove and their investors have £6b riding on them discovering what the magic something is before their competitors do.
There is no point into telling agents to leave Rightmove they won’t.
Best finish this off.
Don’t tell agents to leave, give them a choice; show them they can and show them how.
mmmm. If OTM leads are so poor and waste so much of your and your people’s time, why are you continuing to put properties up on the portal? And second question – why are you still with OTM at all?
we try to use it as a point of differentiation to win against those not using it, and I’m in a contract!
Oh Ian
Your incessant rightmove bashing might help you with your core fanbase (bit like Corbyn and the far left of Labour), but it cuts no mustard with those of us who actually look at the evidence and/or actually think about things…
OTM leads are poor. Especially in lettings. In fact they’re a waste of my, and my people’s time. You could deliver 10x the leads you do, and far from tipping the value equation in your favour, it’d force me to consider dropping OTM! Vast majority are about let properties, and quality of tenant is poor among the rest.
Now Zoopla on the other hand are doing a great job right now.
A suggestion. Drop Facebook, and stop trying to spin the lead story. Noone’s buying it, because they’re wasting their time dealing with the **** leads you’re saying are comparable to rightmove’s.
We have never used Rightmove for lettings due to the poor, time wasting quality of leads that it supplies!!!
The quality of leads via OTM are far superior and most of our let’s come via them.
We have just dropped zoopla due to a price hike and are massively pushing our own site and Facebook page until we get to a point where we will tell Rightmove to stick it up there ass for sales as well !
mmmmm it’s idiots like you who have grown and continue to help Rightmove rip agents off and hike their prices whenever they feel like!!
Grow a pair
I will continue to use my head to make decisions. I pay OTM so I expect to see a return but there isn’t one.
I get a good return from rightmove and particularly zoopla, so I will use them.
it doesn’t mean I don’t want change at OTM so it becomes worth paying for.
You’re not a Rightmove shareholder by any chance are you?! Taking on Rightmove was never going to be easy task, but OTM is getting there and supplying just as many/more quality leads to us. I take my hat off to Ian Springett, he’s achieving the (almost) impossible and deserves our full support, not criticism.
RM leads have dropped off a cliff here (South, outside London) and, as we have said before, OTM get us between 5 and 10 leads for each 1 of Zoopla’s.
There is no difference in quality between any of them really. Some individual leads are better than others for sure but I’ll take five or ten times as many for much less money every time.
OTM leads are extremely poor. It’s the reason why I left them.
They will always try to tell you that they get a lot of leads for you, but getting leads in foreign languages or the dreaded “Hi, can I schedule a time to see this?” are not leads. If these people ever do pick up, they more than likely have no idea they requested a viewing. OTM need to tread carefully here. If anyone does a deep dive into their leads from them, they will soon realise their viewings are massively padded out by Facebook and are more or less useless.
Rightmove has slowly proced itself out of the market. Which is great the monster needs to be taken down – agents are using techniques and different platforms to engage with customers and thinking outside the box to do business.
We came away from RM in July 2017 that was actually the Right Move for us.
RM giving out free extras to keep agents onboard.
why do you think everyone has now got a banner and a featured property..?!
And possibly free extras just to keep quiet
Agreed, but play another record!!
The problem is the record still spins .Every so often Springett regurgtiates the same old which warrants the same response . Nothing changes including the TV adverts
Springett the boy who cried wolf .
With monies rapidly disappearing at OTMP accelerating with more TV advertising the pot is running dry.
it looks like the poor shareholders will be door knocked again for more money .With the SP languishing at 70p well below the launch ,the jury is out .
No signs yet that agents are migrating from RM in sufficient numbers .Patience is running out,In theory, the door has been flung wide open with RM;s price hikes but opportunity squandered .It just hasn’t captured the public’s imagination . No sign of Countrywide arriving and they have already burnt their bridges with Connells
Regime change urgently required
In additional to rapidly disappearing monies I suspect that the Q1 figures from OTM will show a rapidly decreasing number of agents as hundreds of gold members left them at the end of January.
Wow, we are seeing things from a completely different set of eyes. Our OTM leads have been increasing rapidly over the last few months, overtaking Rightmove some times. Having decided we aren’t working just to bolster Rightmove’s dividends, we have given notice them and have placed our eggs firmly in the OTM basket.
OTM brand awareness is certainly increasing in our area and I want to see it succeed – it is the only chance we have realistically of stopping the Rightmove profits juggernaught in its gold plated tracks.
You have to give Ian Springett (and yes perhaps he made some mistakes early on) credit for hanging on there, his persistence is starting to pay off as their agency numbers are increasing – they are now just under 4000 offices short of Rightmove – that’s a real achievement.
If all the ‘hurt’ agents stopped sulking and got back on board we’d have a real competitior to Rightmove and at a fraction of the price.
Very good news for you and, maybe, very good news for us as well.
Miracle as dead duck found to be still quacking………