An online petition protesting against rightmove.co.uk’s subscription fees has failed to garner any real support from UK real estate agents.
The petition was started by “Ripoffmove” over a week ago, on 23 October, and so far only has a pitiful 7 signatures.
Supporters are being asked to put their name to the following statement:
“We, the undersigned intend to cancel our subscription to rightmove on 5th January 2009 unless the subscription price is, at least, halved.
We are all fed up of paying huge subscription fees in a market climate that we are currently experiencing, to a company that is making redundancies and cutbacks and not passing those savings on to their customers.”
The reason for the low number of signatures could lie in the fact that supporters are requested to “only sign if you genuinely intend to take part in this boycott.”
Despite the widespread rumblings of discontent about rightmove.co.uk’s fee structures, it seems many would rather try other negotiating techniques (read our article UK Agents Stage Assault on Portal Fees).
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I find this issue fascinating as it reveals an oft marginalised truth about business decisions: that they’re made by emotional and therefore irrational humans. Given an ‘average’ income from a sale (let’s leave aside those struggling agents bending over and taking it for a few hundred pounds just to secure business), including incidental income like mortgage or FS referrals is probably somewhere around £2,000. Rightmove’s fees come out around the £6,000 per year mark.
That means an agent has only to sell 3 houses a year to cover Rightmove’s costs. Three. For the benefits in lead traffic, efficiences, reach, presence and vendor expectation it’s an absolute no-brainer.
There’s no denying this market is incredibly painful for those affected and lashing out against the nearest and most obvious target is often the only recourse available. I’m not sure it’s the ‘rightmove’ to reduce fees when the service is logically incredibly good value for money, but providing agents some kind of emotional relief is certainly worth investing in, however illogical.
Nothing focuses the mind like a period of poverty, thus agents are looking to remove costs, Rightmove is a smart company however what every one fails to grasp is there are only so many real search made in any one area , and with in some cases Right move has between 10 aqnd 15 branches all paying them for the same area effectivly charging competing agents 10 to 20 times the price you would have to pay google. Thus the smart agents will use the free to list ,sort out their SEO on ther own sites and get their own qualified leads rather than share them with their competitors which is the right move model.
Remember if they dont have the agents properties on their site which in some areas is happening ,they wont get the traffic .
Rightmove continues to represent incredibly good value for money when compared to the newspaper spends of all the agents.
They will continue to be the know consumer brand and therefore will continue to deliver.
The marginalisation of all other portals who continue to replicate the RM model is absolutely probable – so unless you are free with a low expectation of profits and shareholder value or RM you are not going to feature in the longer game.
Frustrating as it is – Rightmove are now just being rewarded for their early foresight and investment – when the media groups missed the boat.
£ 500 per month is cheap for the results delivered