Rightmove says it’s helping to digitise the rental processes, making the process less fragmented and frustrating for agents.
In its trading statement issued over the weekend it says: “We launched our 'Lead-to-Keys' tenancy digital workflow in June, with virtually every element of the tenancy journey - from initial lead, via video viewing, holding deposit, tenant referencing, security deposit, digitally signed contract to 'keys' (and beyond into tenant and landlord insurance and broadband services for tenants) - now available on the Rightmove platform.
“The introduction of ‘enhanced leads’ in the fourth quarter allows tenants to share a little more about themselves when enquiring about a property, reducing the likelihood of a frustrating reference failure for them late in the process.
“Our tenant-referencing product is also increasingly sophisticated, as we introduced open-banking to our referencing process during the year, reducing both the application time for tenants and the accuracy for agents and for landlords. These two releases created a market first, with tenants able to search, secure and contract on a property entirely from their mobile device.”
More generally, the statement revealed predictably strong results for the portal and its shareholders.
There was a 9.0 per cent jump in revenue year-on-year to £3.6m and profits rose 7.0 per cent to £241.3million.
The key measure of how much agents pay - average revenue per advertiser or ARPA - rose 11 per cent to £1,314 per month.
Rightmove justifies these soaring costs to agents by saying they have improved their services - such as the lettings claims, outlined above - but arguably the happiest constituency will be Rightmove’s shareholders, who are enjoying an 8.0 per cent rise in their final dividends.
Outgoing chief executive Peter Brooks-Johnson tells shareholders: “The year’s changing housing market conditions demonstrated our customers’ resilience and ability to adapt and to continue to succeed. The softening from the Covid-induced frenetic market towards a more normal market earlier in the year was disrupted in the final few months by the unexpected rapid mortgage rate increases.
“The strength of our results is a reminder of how effective and integral our new and existing products and services are in helping our customers in both faster and slower markets.
“The continuing love home movers have for Rightmove is testament to the team’s focus on providing an easy to use leading edge platform, enhanced with innovation which home movers want.
“There’s much more to come and exciting plans ahead for Rightmove. As a company that will always be close to my heart, and as a shareholder, I look forward to watching Rightmove’s ongoing progress as it continues to make home moving easier.”
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Lead-to-keys Vs Yourkeys ... just as we at Proptech-PR a consultancy for Proptech Founders have been propounding for years; it used to be agent Vs agent using market share as the battleground, then post 2004 and cloud computing it started very slowly to be tech enabled agent Vs analogue agent, the third wave will be the property consumer leap frogging the agencies and landing on a single platform where all their property needs are catered for. So a B2C model.
At present property portals are digital advertising, their big problem, how to change that lucrative model so they supply/monetise the services of the agents, after all why would an agent pay to list on a portal if the portal was becoming the biggest estate agency in stealth mode in the UK.
No co-incidence that the new CEO of Rightmove is Johan Svanstrom who started in that position six days ago, take a look at Johan's background, very different from Peter Brooks-Johnson. So pinstripe suit out - digital and market place enfant terrible in. And no co-incidence that the PR is now starting to ramp up that Rightmove is looking to be seen as the digital driver of the lettings play in the UK.
Given the London centric and lettings centric DNA of Zoopla, it will be a very interesting tussle that will be unfolding between the number one and number two portals.
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