Rightmove’s entry into the mortgage market presents a threat to financial services leads, agents have been warned.
The portal said in a trading update this week that it is making “good strategic progress” with its mortgages business and has launched its first broker product to enable consumers applying for a mortgage to access brokered advice.
It is projecting a surge in mortgage revenue from around £2m to an estimated £25m over the next three years.
Richard Combellack, chief commercial officer at nurtur.group, warns that this development has “significant implications” for estate agents who offer financial services, intensifying competition in the sector.
He said: "As Rightmove increases its focus on the mortgage lead generation sector, estate agents providing financial services must develop robust plans and systems to generate and nurture leads effectively. With a smaller share of the market pie, agents need to pull out all the stops to remain competitive and sustain lead generation efforts.”
Combellack said agents must prioritise the ability to qualify and convert more leads and make use of services such as live chat to respond promptly to queries.
He also stressed the importance of having a website that is search engine optimised.
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It was always Rightmoves existential problem/crisis, as the first digital Ad's platform replacing printed newspaper advertising for agents it was a winner (well sort of until it abused its Saas model charging skyhigh fees for a business model that cost very little to list 10 or 100 properties) but when it moves from advertiser to taking the bread out of the mouths of agents who feed the portal with that inventory, well maybe game over.
If Rightmove is going to be both agent - offering agency services - and at the same time wants to be the digital Ad's platform - then it must share that agency revenue with agents, after all those new applicants registering do so because they 'see' new inventory listed by the good grace of agents.
Whilst I am on this I always wondered why agents do not ask Rightmove to pay them for the benefit of having their inventory on their site, as it is this element that drives the millions of views a month.
It all boils down to who owns the applicants ... real answer no-one but the entity that is far enough upstream to dice and slice and monetise them first - let's say a portal - will alaways win.
Maybe agents should get together and as a mass insist that if they list a 3-bed semi for sale or let, then any lead generated is theirs (the agents) FIRST to monetise, that would seem fair, otherwise when they look to offer financial services etc, and that buyer/tenant is already sorted that lack of annual revenue could well be the difference between operational profit or loss. On the positive for Rightmove it would alllow agents to pay their annual licence fees which seem to ratchet up annually.
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