UK property portal visits drop amid slowing market - claim

Visits to Rightmove have fallen by 18% in the past year as high mortgage rates hit the national market from the very earliest stages of the buying process, analysis reveals.

Agency comparison website GetAgent has analysed the annual change in monthly visitors to the top online property portal in 21 different countries to see how the international housing market has reacted to widespread economic uncertainty and the rising cost of mortgages. 

Change has been calculated by measuring visits during the month of September 2022 against those in October 2023. 

The annual reduction seen in the UK is mirrored across 16 of the 20 other nations studied by GetAgent.co.uk. 

The only nations where visits have fallen by more than the UK are Belgium (-37%), China (-27%), Portugal (-27%), and Turkey (-24%).

But annual drops have also been recorded in the likes of Sweden (-16%), UAE (-11%), Ireland (-8%), Canada (-7%), and the USA (-5%). 

There are only four countries that have seen monthly portal visits increase on the year. These are Brazil (15%), Italy (6%), Czech Republic (6%), and Poland (5%). 

Despite falling visits in the UK, the country remains one of the world’s most aspirational ownership nations with 96m Rightmove visits in a single month.

This ranks second only to the USA (319.7 million visits to Zillow) where, of course, the population is significantly larger. 

The three major UK portals – Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket - garnered 429.4m visits between August and October 2023, according to the research.

Rightmove remains by far the most visited portal, gobbling up 67.1% of these visits, followed by Zoopla (21.7%), and OTM (11.2%).

Colby Short, chief executive of GetAgent, said: “It’s no surprise that portal visits have declined in the past year. The market has slowed - not crashed - as a result of economic turmoil pushing mortgage rates higher than we have seen in the UK for many years. 

“But UK homebuyers remain an aspirational bunch, so they’re still hitting the portals at a greater rate than nearly every other country we studied during the course of this research.

“There was, until recently, some hope that the UK government would introduce a break or reduction in Stamp Duty, thus supercharging the housing market as we saw when the holiday was introduced during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“But, in the end, Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement came and went with no mention of any such tax break, which means the downward trend of portal visits could potentially continue, at least into the early months of 2024.”