Can you further monetise Rightmove without alienating your agent clients?
Rightmove faces the same existential problem that all portals face, they are a digital advertising billboard, but the second a portal wants to maximise its profits and offer property services it robs its clients of revenue. For example, agents are losing the first bite of the cherry when new applicants register for financial services via a portal upstream of being passed to an agent who listed inventory to capture that new sales lead, and all of the rich data that portals gain is being sold off through the backdoor with none of the revenue going back in the fiscal hopper to the client agents.
On one level the data rich playground of Rightmove and all portals could go full throttle, but the more they encroach and offer agency services, the more they alienate and choke off the income of their clients. Rightmove’s biggest problem is that it charges far too much for far to little, in comparison Zoopla and OTM charge far too little given the level of ‘new’ services being rolled out.
To my mind realestate is speeding up so quickly, playing out across a background of digital transformation that the tech savvy and hungry client will soon be ‘doing’ property operations themselves aided by technology, the last refuge for estate agents is that they hold the prize – the inventory – the property asset that the buyers and tenants need, without this would the public interact with agents given the slowness of service in a digital age – unlikely – and the moment the public can do property themselves, self list and self sell and let, well that glittering inventory no longer needs to be listed on property portals owned by the Murdoch family.
The evolution of agency marches hand in hand with the tech led fourth industrial revolution that is touching all of our lives, it may be dystopian and shaped by a handful of people, but it is coming, ready or not.
Have you ever wondered why Rightmove has failed to change its UX in any significant way? For millions of people who search for property they are using the same outdated filters that belong to 20 years ago, price, bedrooms, postcode, yet when the modern generation digitally graze for other goods and services on other commercial sites, these modern digital purveyors race towards the needs of their potential client, upselling and seeming to guess every want and need of a paying client.
Rightmove has not re-invented itself, and its perceived arrogance – remember the ‘Say no to Rightmove’ movement that gained huge traction in a few days back in 2020, was the first warning that Rightmove was out of step, and needed to stop buying back its shares and paying large dividends, and instead get back to some R&D. Innovation that adds value to the offering rather than charging more for the same should have been the c-suite strategy.
Whichever way the present REA group possible acquisition ends up, in many ways Rightmove has like Countrywide PLC before its assets were bought by the Connells group, become a ‘wounded dinosaur who failed to digitally transform its operations.’
Countrywide PLC was of course a huge multi-dimensional property services company, but it ran a lumbering analogue business, thinking itself to be a property business, rather than a data and digital company. Ironically, Rightmove is one of the very first proptechs (propterty technology) behemoths, so its DNA is very much data, but in a quarter of a century it is now finds itself set in digital aspic, unable to move quickly, and when the CoStar Group meteorite hit, it was counting its 70% profits rather than building an effective moat to stop opportunists like the Murdoch family.
Andrew Stanton Founder & Editor of 'PROPTECH-X' where his insights, connections, analysis and commentary on proptech and real estate are based on writing 1.3M words annually. Plus meeting 1,000 Proptech founders, critiquing 400 decks and having had 130 clients as CEO of 'PROPTECH-PR', a consultancy for Proptech founders seeking growth and exit strategies. He also acts as an advisory for major global real estate companies on sales, acquisitions, market positioning & operations. With 100K followers & readers, he is the 'Proptech Realestate Influencer.'
