Rightmove loses 300 estate agencies per month

Rightmove has been experiencing a sharp downturn in the number of estate agents advertising on its website.

The company, which operates the UK’s largest property portal and claims to advertise around 90% of British homes for sale, has reported that up to 300 estate agents are terminating their agreements each month.

This time last year the firm had 12,600 estate agency customers and the figure is now down by 1,900, with the majority leaving because they have either ceased trading or failed to keep up their subscriptions.

In October, the number of new homes advertised on the site fell by 11% year-on-year, to 3,400, partly as a result of decisions by two housing developers not to advertise on the site.

However, advertising by letting-only agencies has increased over the past 12 months by around 25%, to 2,900.

Rightmove is in the process of making 60 staff redundant. The company says that while these are the first redundancies it has needed to make as a result of the downturn in the UK property market, the scale of the job losses reflects the challenges it expects to face into 2009.

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