Rightmove says it’s to return some £400m to shareholders by the end of its financial year in July 2027.

The revelation is contained in its latest trading statement issued this morning.

Rightmove says it’s to return some £400m to shareholders by the end of its financial year in July 2027.

The revelation is contained in its latest trading statement issued this morning.

The statement adds that broader housing market conditions – set to be worsened by yesterday’s interest rate rise by the Bank of England – means there’s been a 10% fall in buyer demand and a 9% drop in sales agreed.

Despite this, Rightmove expects revenue and profits to grow this year. It has also upgraded its earnings per share forecast.

Here’s the crux of the statement, with the shareholder windfall towards the bottom.

• Revenue and profit growth is in line with our previous guidance for 2026, and we are upgrading guidance for underlying earnings per share from at least 5% to at least 7%.  
• We are delivering our fastest-ever pace of product innovation, with leading solutions for consumers and partners driving increased engagement.  
• While near-term revenue growth remains affected by UK end-market headwinds and the interest rate environment, Rightmove continues to grow revenue, profits and free cash flow through strong execution, targeted investments and rigorous cost discipline.

Innovation: strategic progress highlights

Consumer: increasing engagement and lead qualification

• Ask Rightmove, our multi-agent conversational AI tool suite for consumers, added a third feature, Comparison Assistant, in October, complementing the Search and Evaluation sub-agents.^[1]  In the period, consumers engaging with any aspect of Ask Rightmove have spent over 2x more time on site, saved 3x as many properties and sent over 3x as many leads as those who chose not to use conversational AI.
• We have enhanced functionality on the Rightmove app.  This has led to strong growth in consumer usage of features such as Track a Property, My Places and Mortgage tools, as well as increasing app sign-in rates to a record level of c.90% of leads. 
• The data signals received through our multi-platform strategy, “However you discover, we have you covered”, continue to drive increased relevance and personalisation for consumers, and enhance lead quality for partners.
• Rightmove’s share of consumer time spent on portals was 90% per Comscore, and 76% per SimilarWeb/Sensor Tower.^[2]  Over 85% of consumer traffic was organic/direct, with <1% from large language models (LLMs).^[3]

Partner: strong retention and fast product uptake

• Rightmove IQ– AI-powered tools for Estate Agents
  • Call transcription is now live for all Estate Agency partners within Rightmove Plus, inclusive within all packages.  Since launch in late Q3, over 2m live calls (the equivalent of 10 years’ worth of conversations) have already been transcribed. 
  • For Optimiser Edge partners, Call Intelligence went live, offering AI-powered call summaries and feature tagging, with over 1m calls already enriched. 
  • Rightmove Plus AI Assistant launched property performance summaries, with further features to follow soon.  The tool has already been used by 14,000 estate agents.
• We launched a new Premium Listing product for estate agents, and are trialling Virtual Tour Requests on the Rental Development Listing for rental operators.
• Our “Building Success Together” programme supported almost 4m engagements across Account Managers, Rightmove Plus and Rightmove Hub (our training and resource centre).  There are now over 13,000 enrolments to Rightmove Qualifications for estate agents.
• We continue to see strong uptake of Online Agent Valuation, our fastest-growing product.  Across Estate Agency, partner retention to end October was 92%, the second-highest in the last 10 years (October 2025: 93%).
• Within the Strategic Growth Areas, our Commercial Leader Advantage package has more than doubled the proportion of partners on the top Leader package since the start of 2026.  Mortgages was affected by a high interest rate environment, yet saw >50% more mortgage in principle submissions in the period compared to last year.  Rental partners received 4x the Enhanced Leads in the period compared to last year.

AI-powered Operations: productivity gaining momentum

• We have upgraded our productivity target for 2027, accelerating our innovation pipeline and driving higher profit growth next year.  
• We delivered >60% more releases than in the comparator period and are on track to double the pace of delivery of consumer innovation, supported by agentic tools.
• We are on track to announce and scale New Growth initiatives as planned over 2027 and 2028.

Current end-market conditions

As has been widely reported, macro conditions, including interest and mortgage rate expectations, as well as overall consumer and partner confidence remain challenging. Since Rightmove’s interim results in July:

• Mortgage rates have continued to rise with the average 5-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.5% on 31 October compared to 5.0% at 30 June.  Following yesterday’s Bank of England base rate increase, market pricing implies further base rate rises in 2027, impacting consumer affordability.
• Resale estate agent confidence is lower as a result, with buyer demand down 10% and sales agreed 9% lower, as ongoing record stock levels cause some downward pressure on house prices.  At 31 October, the average house price was 0.3% below the equivalent one year ago.
• Rental properties saw an increase in enquiries per available property, with rental prices +2.9% compared to a year ago. 
• New Homes remain subdued, with 6% fewer developments on site at 31 October compared to 31 December 2025.   The announcement of the government’s new first-time buyer scheme, Your First Home, has improved housebuilder optimism, but remains subject to implementation.  Given the anticipated Q2 2027 launch date, any positive impact on housebuilding volumes is expected to be later in 2027 and onwards.

Outlook and guidance

In 2026 we expect:

• Revenue growth to be 6% to 7%, within previous 6% to 8% guidance
  • ARPA growth of £100-£110 (previously £110-£120) entirely reflects the dynamics in New Homes impacting developer spend, with no change to our Estate Agency ARPA expectations
  • Membership guidance is unchanged
  • New Homes revenues are expected to be below 2025, due to development volume reduction only partially offset by ARPA growth
  • Strategic Growth Area growth of 20-30% is unchanged
• Underlying operating profit growth to be at least 3%, within previous guidance of 3% to 5%
• Upgraded 2026 underlying earnings per share growth to at least 7% (previously at least 5%)

For 2027, reflecting the challenging and uncertain macro backdrop, we currently expect:

• Revenue growth similar to 2026 as the current end-market dynamics are expected to continue into next year.  This reflects the full-year impact of fewer New Homes developments and a subdued Estate Agency market.  We expect:
  • ARPA growth of £100-£110
  • Broadly flat Core membership
  • Strategic Growth Areas growth of 20-30%
• An increase in underlying operating profit growth to 4-7%. This will be driven by product launches, productivity gains and cost discipline alongside ongoing investment in the initiatives announced in November 2025, with a margin of at least 67%
• Underlying earnings per share growth of at least 10%

Capital returns

Rightmove continues to expect to return over £400m to shareholders between 31 July 2026 and 31 July 2027.  Since 31 July 2026, c.£125m has been returned through the interim dividend (£30m) and share buybacks (£95m), in part funded by the recently agreed revolving credit facility.  We expect to return a further £80m through share buybacks by year-end.