In a week Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon provided an insight into their sales activity and outlook for 2023, Rightmove has corroborated the housebuilder’s results from the property app’s viewpoint elsewhere in the supply chain.
In their 2022 full year results, Rightmove describes a resilient operating environment, albeit one that is showing the signs of a housing slow down.
Revenue per advertiser jumped by 11% to £1,314 per month as Rightmove leveraged their dominant position in the market to help offset wider worries about the health of the UK property market.
Rightmove’s revenue increased 9% in 2022 to £332.6m, but their key user engagement levels fell. This points to lower activity in the housing market and falling interest in seeking out new properties. Rightmove’s users spent 16.3 billion minutes on the app in 2022, compared to 18.3 billion in 2021.
“Rightmove has reported a decline in the level of engagement on its site as the housing market cools compared to the pandemic. Consumers paid over 2.3bn visits to the group’s platforms last year, down from 2.5bn. There was a 2bn reduction in the number of minutes spent searching for properties.,” said Sophie Lund-Yates, Lead Equity Analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
“This is little surprise given we’ve heard from the major housebuilders who have called out tough mortgage affordability as a reason sales rates are dipping. While a cooling market doesn’t affect Rightmove directly, it does impact the estate agents it relies on for fees. At the moment things continue to look healthy in that regard, with price increases something of a guarantee. As the market changes and estate agent numbers continue to decline, Rightmove could find itself needing to generate income in more creative ways in the future.”
Rightmove shares were 2% weaker at the time of writing.