Estate agents are maintaining investment in online classified property adverts while cutting print spend, according to the country’s biggest online property portal Rightmove.co.uk. In a management statement for the first four months of the year, Rightmove says it expects a rise in profits for 2009, ahead of the board’s previous expectations. Click-through enquiries to advertisers were at “record levels” and overall traffic was at “similar levels” to experienced before the bottom fell out of the UK housing market in the middle of last year. In 2008 Rightmove made revenues of £74 million, up 31 percent, and profits of £41 million. Release.
It’s worrying news for local newspapers, which for decades had relied on homes adverts to keep them afloat. While big property chains have stepped back from local press, Rightmove is returning higher level of average revenue per advertiser compared to Q108, its overall number of estate agent members is unchanged since 2008 at 9,800 and it has signed three major contracts renewals in Q1 including the UK’s largest estate agent Countrywide. Rightmove admits the cutback in new building activity has been a problem, especially for overseas listings. The site’s traffic had dipped 16 percent in December to 1.9 million unique users but was up year on year in April.
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