Rightmove

In the UK there are two main players when it comes to property portals: Rightmove, the current market leader, and Zoopla Property Group who own most of the rest including Zoopla, FindaProperty and Primelocation. Property portals make their money from estate and letting agents who pay substantial monthly fees to list property on their websites. In return, portals spend millions on television, radio, print, social, and just about every other form of advertising media you can think of to give their members (the estate agents) the massive exposure that they could not alone afford.

Typically over 90% of enquiries your average estate agent receives are from a property portal. High street presence doesn’t really factor into it anymore and very few agents have survived without getting on board with one or more portals. As a result you would be ill advised to market a property with any agent that does not list on at least one of the big portals, and there is little advantage in multi-agency advertising, so just go with the best deal.

Why can’t landlords list property on Rightmove directly?

Unfortunately it is not possible for individual landlords to list property directly on a portal like Rightmove or Zoopla. This is a commercial decision the portals have made for a variety of reasons:

1. It protects their members, the estate agents, who in turn provide a reliable monthly income for the portal. This kind of recurring revenue is much more attractive than selling individual listings.

2. It means their advertising can be focused purely on home movers. If they had to reach landlords and sellers too it would dilute the message. Estate agents are very well placed to find landlords and sellers at a local level.

3. It keeps the quality of listings high. If an estate agent is putting up misleading or poor quality information they are a much bigger target and can be taken off the portal along with all their property. Policing hundreds of thousands of private listings would take too much time.

How can I get my property onto the portals without paying an agent?

Ok, here is the sell. We can do this for you. We offer a free service to landlords, paid for by charging tenants a fee for credit and reference checks at the end of the tenant find process. With this option we foot the risk as failing to find you tenants has a direct cost to our business. We also offer a second option for landlords who would rather not have an agency fee associated with letting their property, or who want to take a more DIY approach. Our “marketing only” option will get your property listed on all the property portals for just £49.