Rightmove pricing power draws scrutiny in UK property listings market

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Rightmove pricing in UK listings

Highlights

Rightmove maintains operating margins of 64 to 74 percent since 2010, far exceeding peers like Scout24, REA, and Meta, raising market power concerns.
Nearly 1.5 billion pounds in legal claims from thousands of estate agents and developers allege Rightmove abuses its dominant market position, capturing about 80 percent of UK search traffic.
Rightmove's average revenue per UK property is projected to reach 440 pounds in 2025, but increasing agent hostility and regulatory comparisons suggest listing charges may not be fully passed through to sellers.

Profitability and competition concerns

As reported by Financial Times, concerns about Rightmove focus first on whether its market position lets it charge estate agents more than a competitive market would allow. The argument rests largely on the company’s long record of unusually high margins, supported by network effects that make it difficult for smaller rivals to gain scale.

Rightmove’s operating margin has stayed between 64 and 74 per cent since 2010, a level the article says is higher than peers such as Germany’s Scout24 and Australia’s REA, and even above Meta. Fees charged to estate agents for listings produce most of the company’s profits, while industry resentment remains high.

Trevor Abrahmsohn, head of estate agency Glentree, says agents are resisting what he describes as mounting pressure from the portal. He also points to the failed attempt to build stronger competition through OnTheMarket, the agent-backed rival launched in 2015 and acquired by a U.S. bidder in 2023.

Thousands of estate agents and housing developers are now pursuing a legal claim of just under 1.5 billion pounds against Rightmove, alleging abuse of a dominant market position. Although Zoopla and OnTheMarket still compete with the company, Rightmove is estimated to attract about 80 per cent of search traffic, limiting the apparent impact of rivals.

Whether sellers ultimately bear the cost

The second issue is whether listing charges are passed through to property vendors. The article says reliable per-property data is not publicly available, but a rough estimate based on annual revenue from agents and developers divided by UK home sales suggests revenue per property has risen steadily, reaching an average of 440 pounds in 2025.

Even at that level, the estimate is presented as modest compared with taxes such as stamp duty. At the same time, the article notes that hostility from estate agents could indicate they are not fully able to transfer Rightmove’s charges to customers, despite the theory that businesses should pass on costs when demand is strong enough.

A comparison is drawn with the English lettings market, where agents were banned in 2019 from charging fees to tenants. Research cited from Jan David Bakker and Nikhil Datta suggests agents were then unable to offset the loss by charging landlords more, an outcome Datta says implies savings from lower Rightmove fees might not necessarily reach sellers either.

Rightmove says its platform has made buying and selling homes more transparent by reducing search costs and expanding access to information. Still, the debate over its pricing power is arriving as the company warns profitability will fall because it needs to invest more in artificial intelligence, while its shares have almost halved since their record high last August amid concern that broader chatbot competition could weaken specialist property portals.

In our earlier article, we looked at calls to reform the UK’s fiscal framework so that policymakers and investors assess the state’s financial health using public net worth alongside headline debt and deficits. The piece argued that focusing too narrowly on debt targets can encourage underinvestment and deferred maintenance, and proposed closer alignment with Whole of Government Accounts plus a UK Asset Map to clarify what the state owns, what it costs to maintain, and which liabilities are building up.

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