The supply/demand imbalance in the rental sector reduced last year but remains high, Rightmove claims.
An outlook in its 2024 results said: “Within the lettings sub-market, supply and demand are rebalancing slightly, although enquiries per available property remain above pre-Covid levels.”
It comes as lettings agents have helped push up the property portal’s revenues again.
Rightmove’s 2024 full-year annual report showed average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) rose £93 to £1,524 per month. Of this agency ARPA was £1,440, increasing by 6% annually and new homes developers’ ARPA was £1,987 up by 9%.
In Rental Services, 2024 was the first full year of selling ‘Lead to Keys’, a new digital end-to-end product for lettings agents, landlords and renters, whereby a rental agreement can be achieved in five digitised and efficient steps.
Rightmove said: “Having launched towards the end of 2023 with 31 agents, Lead to Keys is in the early days of its potential. However, it is growing fast and we saw over 500 agents signed up to the service by the end of 2024.
“We expanded the product range and feature functionality within the two main products, Tenancy Manager and Enquiry Manager, to both source and then qualify potential tenants quickly. Rightmove’s strong existing upper funnel position of tenancy applications enables a strong and efficient process flow for rental agents adopting the service.”
Overall, Rightmove reported that revenue for 2024 was up 7% annually as estate agency and new homes developer partners continued to upgrade their packages, increased their use of digital products and renewed contracts.
Its underlying operating profit was up 4% to £273.9m.
Agency revenues increased to £280m, up 7% on 2023. Rightmove said this was due to agents continuing to invest in package upgrades and additional products. It reported the “quickest ever adoption” of its top end package, Optimiser Edge, with more than 1,600 partners upgrading across the year and a further 1,100 migrating from the Optimiser 20 package.
Rightmove said it was the fourth-busiest UK-based digital platform in 2024, behind only the BBC, digital publisher Reach, and the government’s own website, Gov.uk
Johan Svanstrom, chief executive of Rightmove, said: “We delivered strong results, demonstrating yet again the resilience of Rightmove’s business model. Consumers visited the Rightmove platform 2.3 billion times in 2024, and with the UK’s largest selection of properties for sale and to rent they spent a combined 16.4 billion minutes searching and using our expanding set of valuable tools.
“We’re continuing to invest in technology and products to make the platform even more useful and effective for both partners and consumers. 24 AI-enabled teams of software engineers delivered over 5,000 releases, features and enhancements in 2024.
“We have a clear strategy to further digitise the home moving market, powered by the UK’s largest set of property data and insights. There is a long runway of opportunity to both broaden and deepen Rightmove’s services on one connected platform, and our team is continuing to drive that momentum in 2025.”
