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The only constant is change. In 2000 Rightmove changed agents newspaper advertising spend for a digital advertising spend model. The world moved. It's business model is built upon 'agents' listing inventory and paying for it. Around the world other property portals allow the public to list directly on to their portals, if for example OTM or Zoopla adopted this model and the revenue from the public outweighed agents licence fees, how long would the most disliked property portal in the UK stay in business? As for large companies being unassailable, WeWork had a market cap of $47BN so a tiny bit larger than Rightmove, until it ceased trading. A better example is the Netflix and Blockbuster story, Blockbuster was the Rightmove of the video rental space, and Netflix came to them saying they were the future, even offering to sell to them - Blockbuster laughed, sitting inside their impregnable fortress with a huge moat around it, 15 years later they closed their doors and well renting videos at your local store or having them mailed to you has sort of given way to a Netflix model a $263BN market cap business. Your point that 'you' would not use an agent without Rightmove in its mix - is well just the point - because you are a person of a certain age - not a tech savvy 18 year old who runs their life on super Apps, and would find that driving around Rightmove is like playing Pokémon (2000 version), a million miles from the beautifully crafted UX experiences they get daily. Failure to innovate and be relevant for that 18 year old who will soon be a tenant and then a homebuyer is very much like those who poured scorn on my Times article four years ago on TikTok as a vehicle for advertising - agency. I made the point that it is the youth and the platforms they use and how they use them that determines if companies like Rightmove will have any relevance. Rightmove may well get millions of views a month, but where is the uptick in sales and lettings in the UK, answer the needle stays the same, as I know there is an awful lot of smoke and mirrors in the proptech space and perhaps agents would do well to consider what they are actually paying for - me I would be charging the portal for listing my inventory - as without it - not one pair of eyes would be coming to the site. Now that is an idea for a radical re-plumbing of the power base, if all Rightmove agents did not list for a month, explaining to vendors and landlords that the cost was too high, Rightmove would soon realise who has the real power and maybe the 10% ratchet of upward costs would stop the hostage situation once and for all.

Kid Sneerer and Angela Bovverboot will say anything to get elected. I can see them coming in and saying " We can see that nasty Tory housing and taxation policies are causing landlords to sell up and increase homelessness. We will stop that by removing the threat of Section 21 abolition, restoring full mortgage cost deductions, and being really, really nice to landlords" Then I woke up.

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A S, aren’t all politicians donkeys? 😂

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Great information!!

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2.8 million new instructions- who wants some? While preparing a submission for the at the time unannounced CLG inquiry in PRS (CLG only told their friends) I did some number crunching in the hope of adding a positive input into a department that is seemingly bereft of any experience of the Private rented sector and almost allergic to anyone who has. I identified that a 100,000 tenancy provision by private landlords into the assisted tenancy market (pensions and benefits) was worth approaching £1 billion to landlords. One hundred thousand tenancies was a deliberately small percentage ; an easy , appropriately sized sample to make the point rather than a scientifically calculated figure. It represented about 1.4% of the middle ground between PRS and social housing that many agencies and landlords steer clear of. Subsequent research (discussion) shows that about 40% of assisted tenants are no worse at paying their rent than anyone else. Essentially what that means is that there is an additional £28 billion rental opportunity for those prepared to engage the sector. Increasing the PRS provision by up to by 70% is surely a good start in solving the housing crisis. It will obviously put a large rental income in the pocket of those who can afford to buy to rent out, it will put a large commission income in the pockets of those servicing the industry but moreover it will add the incentive to have another 2.8 million private rented sector properties available to ease the housing crisis. Obviously that will leave the remaining 60% of the sector to house but it seems reasonable that government doesn’t attempt to privatise their entire housing obligation, such schemes tend to lead to civil unrest. There will be natural envy at the rich seemingly exploiting the poor, I am not getting into the social ethics of a solution, simply suggesting how a set of government departments could set about solving issues in an industry they don’t properly understand.