Rightmove eyes the future with more commercial property activity

Rightmove says its commercial property side is “continuing to gain momentum” with 650,000 leads generated for customers in 2017.

Perhaps with an awareness that expansion of the residential listings service cannot continue indefinitely, Rightmove has told its shareholders and the City that commercial property professionals and occupiers spent an average of over 11m minutes per month in 2017 searching commercial property listings on the portal.  

As a result, “more and more commercial agents and commercial landlords are choosing to advertise with us.”

Meanwhile the industry is continuing to scrutinise Rightmove’s residential sector results for 2017 announced at the end of last week. The portal’s revenue was up 11 per cent to £243.3m and its operating profit rose 11 per cent to £184.4m. 

Anthony Codling, equity analyst at Jefferies - which has worked for ZPG in the past - says the 2017 results were ahead of his expectations.

“On average each customer pays Rightmove £11,000, which it turns into £8,385 of profit or £700 per month of the £922 per month paid” he says, adding that: “Agents may be unhappy about this, but they continue to use Rightmove to market their properties and currently more than 45 per cent of agents are paying more than £1,000 per month, which equates to additional profit for Rightmove of £760 per month or £9,100 for the year.”