Rightmove has today claimed that its traffic is up 30% year-on-year compared to 2020 and that 2021 has seen the best start of any of the portal's 20-year history. Despite The UK going into lockdown for a second time this week, the country's leading property portal has reportedly been seeing daily traffic figures of over 6 million. As for leads, Rightmove is reporting that sale lead volumes are 11% higher than at the same time last year and rental leads 22% above 2020.
“January is usually one of our busiest months of the year as people start to make new year plans to move, as was the case at the start of last year when we also had the post-election bounce that gave hope of an active spring market, before that all changed with the temporary closure from March until May” explains Rightmove’s director of property data Tim Bannister.
Rightmove will see the traffic stats as a timely reminder to agents of who is boss in the British market. Recent months have seen arch-rival Zoopla crowing over a three-year high of paying agent customers and break out the marketing war chest as well as several positive headlines for soon-to-launch, well-heeled rival Boomin which has its eyes on a slice of Rightmove's market share.