Breaking Property News – 09/08/24

Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X.

So Rightmove v OpenRent is over & worryingly quickly too.

Thought Leadership by Mal McCallion – CEO of Modelprop

‘The first inkling that all was not well in this long-standing – and mutually-supportive – relationship between hashtag#Rightmove and hashtag#OpenRent was spotted by Nigel Lewis of hashtag#TheNegotiator. His exclusive story, that OpenRent had removed Rightmove’s logo from its product offering last week – days before any clarification statement from either party – set in train this entire public standoff.

It was fitting, then, that Lewis also broke the extraordinary news last night that OpenRent and Rightmove had kissed and made up.

Whoa – so what happened, to change from Rightmove’s statement a couple of days ago that yes, we’ve lost 8% of our letting property stock by executing OpenRent but everything will be OK, to welcoming their errant ‘partner’ back in to the fold?

Bad news everyone: OpenRent bowed to pressure

Rightmove piled on the pain, releasing a statement to the stock market emphasising that OpenRent had chosen not to renew on their terms – but, for investors, that was OK. They would continue to execute all refuseniks.

And so, painfully, OpenRent buckled. It’s fair to say that their business model is so predicated on simple, blind distribution through portals that to lose the main one was always going to expose their product as a bit rubbish. (Picture Mal McCallion)

However, OpenRent’s capitulation to Rightmove should worry us all

If a business that has 8% of Rightmove’s lettings’ stock won’t escape, despite a terrifying uplift in charging, what other agent can?

It’s hard to cry for OpenRent, who have been pulling the tightest landlords out of the market for a while and giving them cheap access to portals that other agents pay much more for. However, their outright humiliation at the hands of Rightmove will only serve to embolden a business that – let’s face it – doesn’t need any more reason to confidently uplift its charges in 2025.

From here on-in, Rightmove will have relatively little fear that any individual agent can swerve its price rises. If OpenRent capitulated, they believe, then you’re going to too.

Or are you? It’s the collective narrative that’s the thing. If everyone keeps saying that Rightmove’s essential then Rightmove will remain essential. However, if everyone starts ensuring that a marketing mix of social, other portals, AI, hyper-local is more important then that’s going to start to carry some weight.

If you’re interested in finding a way out of this let me know at mal@modelprop.ai as this is a really critical moment. There has to be – there will be – another way.’

Analysis – by Andrew Stanton  

Is there confirmation that OpenRent blinked first Mal?

Could CoStar Group which has a market cap, 10 x’s Rightmove’s not have been a factor? As they are now racing down the track with OTM – their amount of new ‘traffic’ climbing at an alarming rate month on month? Rightmove’s stock was cruising at 576, then OpenRent debacle hit lowering it to 518 just yesterday – my thoughts are it is no certainity that OR buckled, the last thing Rightmove needs right now with the departure of their CFO Alison Dolan this week who went to M&S is more bad news.

I do agree Mal that many Saas services do hitch themselves to a portal play as the distribution channel – which gives portals a whiphand, but now portals are no longer the ‘masters of the universe’ when it comes to ‘digital marketing’ as a tech savvy 12 year old can now put together quite a formidable marketing strategy for an agency … we might see that tech unsavvy agent who was led like a bull by the nose to pay over the odds for newspaper advertising pre-2000, now realising that they have the power in their own hands to be a ‘Digital advertising marketplace.’

Monetising the applicant lead – the renter/buyer/vendor/landlord by portals BEFORE that lead goes to the agent – has always been p—–g in the soup, if agents are the first point of contact for people requiring property services then they get the chance to scoop far more revenue each and every time.

Full disclosure Mal McCallion – CEO of Modelprop is not a client of Proptech-PR, but he is a man who has seen into the future and knows what it looks like – so if you really want to be the leader of the pack start by having a few chats with someone in the know.

 

Andrew Stanton Executive Editor – moving property and proptech forward. PropTech-X

Andrew Stanton

CEO & Founder Proptech-PR. Proptech Real Estate Influencer, Executive Editor of Estate Agent Networking. Leading PR consultancy in Proptech & Real Estate.

You May Also Enjoy

Breaking News

UK monthly property transactions for May 2025

Headline statistics from the latest transactions data include: the provisional seasonally adjusted estimate of the number of UK residential transactions in May 2025 is 81,470, 12% lower than May 2024 and 25% higher than April 2025 the provisional non-seasonally adjusted estimate of the number of UK residential transactions in May 2025 is 80,530, 13% lower than May 2024 and…
Read More
Breaking News

Construction Skills Mission Board (CSMB) shows the Government has a plan

The Construction Skills Mission Board (CSMB) held its first board meeting today (26 June 2025), where it set out a roadmap for recruiting 100,000 more construction workers a year by the end of Parliament. Richard Beresford, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Builders (NFB), said: “The Construction Skills Mission Board (CSMB) is a recognition…
Read More
Paint Stripper Tools
Estate Agent Talk

5 Strategies to Optimise Your Warehouse for Real Estate

The term fixer-upper can mean many things, from ‘slap some paint on the walls and it looks brand new’ to ‘will this building collapse if we open the front door?’ Indeed, in the dicey world of commercial property acquisition, each warehouse you buy will probably fall into both camps. Thinking about the viability of warehouses…
Read More
Breaking News

HMOs sell for up to 50% above market average

New research from Excellion Capital, the boutique debt advisory and investment firm, reveals that HMOs sell for as much as 50% above the average house price, further increasing their investment potential after it was revealed that HMOs also create rental yields of up to 12.5%. After previous research from Excellion Capital recently showed that the…
Read More
Breaking News

UK buyers struggle while 50,000 homes sit empty

As the UK housing crisis deepens, new analysis by Open Property Group exposes a worrying surge in so-called “zombie homes”- properties that sit unoccupied and deteriorating while millions struggle to access affordable housing. Key insights: 50,000+ long-term vacant homes in England alone 23,000+ of these have been empty for more than two years Estimated £13.6…
Read More
Breaking News

Breaking Property News 26/06/25

Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X.   The UK is Europe’s second most distressed market despite headline GDP growth Retail and Consumers Goods has emerged as the most distressed sector in Europe, with distress levels now the highest since the global financial crisis, according to the latest Weil European Distress Index (WEDI). The…
Read More