Rightmove website busy despite housing market woes

Rightmove today said usage on its website was at near record levels despite a tough housing market, making it confident of meeting expectations for the year.

Traffic on the property website rose 16% between July and September, with August registering two of the site's busiest days. A TV campaign in September helped the site record its strongest week in terms of market share of page impressions.

Rightmove said it expected to achieve significant organic growth next year based on housing transactions running at half the levels of a normal market.

"As anticipated, this statement indicates that despite some uncertainty regarding the direction of the housing market, the group has made further progress reflecting the benefit of its dominant market position," Altium Securities said in a note.

Advertisers on the site have increased 2.5% to 18,100 since the start of the year, while estate agency and letting membership was up 5%. The company said it would pay an interim dividend of 5p a share on November 12 and intended to return cash to shareholders through share buybacks.

Shares in Rightmove were down 1.84% at 773p this morning.