Rightmove's Fee Paradox: Why Agents Keep Paying More Despite the Grumbling

Rightmove's latest shareholder report, delivered at the weekend's AGM, contains a paradox that should concern every landlord, developer and agent in the UK property market: the more estate agents complain about Rightmove's fees, the more of them sign up and the more they pay. This is not a minor curiosity. It is a structural feature of the UK property portal market that has profound implications for the cost of doing business in residential sales and lettings, and ultimately for the fees passed on to buyers, sellers, tenants and landlords.

The economics here are straightforward once you strip away the sentiment. Rightmove commands somewhere in the region of 80-85% of UK property seeker traffic, dwarfing Zoopla and OnTheMarket combined. Average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) has climbed roughly 8-9% annually in recent years, comfortably outpacing general inflation, while Rightmove's operating margins have consistently sat above 70% — figures that would be considered extraordinary in almost any other sector serving small business customers. Agents grumble in trade forums and at industry conferences, yet membership numbers keep rising. This is classic network effect behaviour: no individual agent can afford to leave a platform where the overwhelming majority of buyer and tenant enquiries originate, regardless of the price charged for access.

For UK property investors and buy-to-let landlords, this matters more than it might first appear. Portal fees are a fixed cost baked into every agent's overheads, and those overheads are recovered through commission structures on sales and lettings. In markets such as Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, where transaction volumes have been comparatively resilient through 2023 and 2024 despite higher mortgage rates, agents have less room to absorb rising portal costs without passing them through. In London and Surrey, where average property values and commission percentages are higher, the portal fee represents a smaller proportional burden — but even there, smaller independent agents report portal costs now rank among their top three fixed expenses, alongside staff and premises.

The regional divergence is worth examining closely. In high-churn rental markets like Newcastle and Liverpool, where student and young professional demand keeps letting agents dependent on maximum visibility, the pressure to maintain premium Rightmove listings is particularly acute — agents cannot risk being invisible to renters scrolling through search results in a market where properties can let within days. Smaller regional agents, without the volume to negotiate favourable terms, effectively subsidise the platform's pricing power through take-it-or-leave-it contracts. This has accelerated consolidation in the agency sector itself, as independent firms merge or get acquired by larger groups better placed to absorb rising technology and marketing costs — a trend investors in agency businesses and PropTech should watch closely.

Looking ahead six to twelve months, three dynamics will shape how this plays out. First, expect continued scrutiny from the Competition and Markets Authority and consumer groups over portal dominance, following precedents set in other digital marketplace sectors; any regulatory intervention could reshape fee structures industry-wide. Second, Rightmove's newly merged rival — the OnTheMarket and Boomin-adjacent consolidation attempts, alongside Zoopla's continued investment in data and valuation tools — will test whether a genuine two-horse race can finally emerge, something agents have wanted for over a decade without success. Third, and most importantly for investors, expect portal costs to increasingly factor into decisions about which agents developers and institutional landlords choose to instruct for large-scale disposals, particularly in build-to-rent and PRS portfolios where marketing spend is scrutinised line by line.

The uncomfortable truth for agents — and by extension for the landlords and developers who fund their fee income — is that Rightmove's position is not vulnerable to complaint, only to genuine competitive alternatives or regulatory action. Until either materialises at scale, the sector will continue to grumble publicly while paying privately, and those costs will keep flowing quietly through the commission structures charged across every regional market from Newcastle to Surrey. Investors should treat portal fee inflation as a permanent line item in agency economics, not a temporary irritant, and factor it into any assessment of agency businesses or marketing budgets for large disposals over the coming year.