Posts Tagged ‘rightmove’

Just days after Rightmove MD Ed Williams sold £8 million worth of shares the company, along with his wife seems to be buying some back at a lower price.

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U.K. property portal group Rightmove Ltd has confirmed that it has sold its majority share in Holiday Lettings to TripAdvisor. Read the rest of this entry »

According to a report in the Financial Times, Google is in talks with estate agents in a bid to compete for U.K. online property listings – news that has immediately spooked shareholders in established players such as Rightmove.

Google has yet to confirm the news, let alone dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s, but the speculation is that any such service would probably be modeled on similar launches in Australia and in the U.S.,  which lets agents list properties for free using a combination of Google Maps and Google Street View. 

As things stand, the big U.K. players — such as Rightmove and PropertyFinder — charge a subscription fee with Rightmove’s fees reported as averaging £325 per month. Google’s approach is to provide listings for free and charge for better placing or enhanced listings. As such, it’s likely to appeal to smaller agents who feel squeezed out by the subscription model. The biggest impact is likely to be felt by Rightmove — which is why share prices tumbled on the news. Rightmove’s reply, however, has been to point out that in Australia there is no sign that agents have abandoned the established listings sites and that if anything the signs were that the issue for agents was raising brand awareness, not getting more properties online.

In the U.S. and Australia models, Google uses its search engine to find listed properties and pin them to map results. Many property sites are already mashing up Google Maps with property listings — so it’s little surprise that Google would. Google scrapes agents’ sites for listings and invites them to upload their own live feeds. It positions the service as “extra exposure” for agents’ listings. 

One more sign of the difficulties in today’s real estate market. Aggregator Trulia.com has added a price reduction tool. Competitors Redfin and ZipRealty already have such functionality.

Trulia explained the move on its blog: “We know from search behavior on Trulia.com that house hunters are seeking value in today’s market. If a home has a ‘price reduction’ it may or may not necessarily be ‘a value,’ but this is a tool that users have been demanding, and today — we delivered.”

The price reduction feature is available as a filter in Trulia’s search box.

To back up the need for the tool, Trulia in a press release added that 27 percent of homes currently on the market in the U.S. have experienced at least one price cut. The press release details price reduction figures for 15 markets.

In the U.K. RightMove.co.uk is launching an e-magazine that showcases properties with recent price reductions of 2 percent or more. It will be called Property Deal Weekly.

Rightmove.co.uk continues to suffer. In June this year HBOS sold its 13 percent stake, leaving Connells as the property portal’s only founding real estate agency as a major shareholder. Now Connells has sold its remaining 18 percent or 21 million stake in Rightmove for 155 pence a share. The announcement was made one day after Connells renewed a long standing marketing agreement with Rightmove, which means that the agency will advertise on Rightmove until 2012.

Stephen Shipperley, group executive chairman of Connells, told Estate Agency News the sale raises cash for possible expansion of the Connells operation. “We sold the shares because currently we see greater opportunities in buying property market related businesses than in holding shares,” he said. “This sale is not a vote of no confidence in Rightmove. We have renewed our listing agreement until 2012 and I remain on the Rightmove board as long as other board members and shareholders agree.”

Rightmove, the largest property website in Britain, was launched in 2000 by HBOS, Connells, Country­wide and RSA (then Royal & Sun­Alliance). Both Connells, Britain‘s second-biggest real estate chain, and Rightmove have been hit by the property market crunch. Agents are dropping out and Rightmove was forced to cut 20 per cent of its workforce last month.

Rightmove’s shares have dropped 74 percent since June last year. The sale pushed down the share price 20 pence to 163 pence.

U.K.-based Rightmove now accepts property listings from private sellers based overseas. According to Rightmove, the company’s overseas team has already received hundreds of inquiries from private sellers wishing to advertise their property on Rightmove.

GlobalEdge.co.uk, Internet portal for overseas estate agents and developers, highlights the commercial opportunity that second homeowners look to reduce their risk in times of economic downturn. Rightmove is the majority shareholder in HolidayLettings.co.uk which has a large database of private-property owners.

Rightmove’s core business is agents and developers. Mei-Kuen Tsui at Rightmove underlines that the company will never ever allow listings from private U.K.-based sellers. “We work with over 12,000 agents in the U.K. That would be stupid to risk,” she said.

The price for the listings is £250 for three months. Agents and developers pay £250 per month for up to 100 properties.

Rightmove, the biggest property Web site in the U.K., will cut the workforce by 20 percent, making 60 people redundant, as the housing market in the UK continues to slow. According to Rightmove, these are “the first redundancies that the company has made as a result of the downturn in the UK housing market.” The planned cost reductions will result in savings of around 5 million pounds ($7.8 million).

In addition to these staff cuts Rightmove, which advertises around 90 percent of homes for sale in the U.K., will also cut back the Rightmove Overseas business because of decreased demand for property in continental Europe.