Is the steam running out of the ‘Say No to Rightmove’ campaign?
After the full month of full campaigning by the four different groups, the number of agents leaving Rightmove has yet to significantly ramp up.
Agents who are hoping that the Coronvirus crisis and clumsy handling of it by Rightmove might be the beginning of the end for the portal might want to look away now.
Research completed for The Negotiator by a member of the Boycott Rightmove Facebook group reveals that the number of agents leaving Rightmove has slowed down dramatically.
Richard Dixon of The Yorkshire Property Guide last week scraped data from the portal’s agent listings to discover that 300 agents left during April, but warned that this leaving rate would have to rise to at least 500 or more a month for it to sit up and pay attention to the different campaigns.
These include Murray Lee’s Agents Union; Rob Sargent’s Say No To Rightmove, Paul Davies from Boycott Rightmove and David Thomas from Revolution Estate Agency 2020.
But Dixon’s latest figures show that the number of agents who left during May was just shy of 100, much less than during April.
Dixon also says his research suggests that one in 12 agents who left during April re-joined the portal during May.
“The only other explanation for this would be that more agents are setting up new agencies and signing on to the portal, but this is unlikely given the current economic situation,” says Dixon. “No wonder the portal is silent.”
These figures will be of interest to industry trainer Iain White, who is due to conduct a webinar tomorrow for agents within Rob Sargent’s group on how to ‘survive and thrive without Rightmove’ but who recently said the number of agents leaving Rightmove “needed to be much greater”.
Far from running out of steam we are powering up to the next stage of the challenge
The SayNo team under Rob’s leadership arranged a webinar with the portal guru Iain White on how to move forward WITHOUT Rightmove. I’m sure after viewing this many more will follow suit!
We are still getting lots of support and there is still time to give notice before the discount period at the end of July
It’s up to RM to come to us with an offer to continue and I am personally aware they are reviewing things as we speak.
Interestingly, I, like some other agents , have been contacted this week by their reps who wrote… “so thought I would reach out and see if it would be possible to schedule a review call to go over anything in relation to your Rightmove account.”
Makes me wonder if they are looking over their shoulders ?
Watch this space as the results could be interesting…