New figures show that as a brand Purplebricks had by far and away the most properties marked as Sold Subject to Contract on Rightmove last year.
Altogether, it had 49,166 unique properties marked as SSTC in 2019 – a 5.7% market share of SSTC properties on the portal.
Next comes William H Brown with 12,535 and SSTC market share of 1.5% on Rightmove, followed by Hunters (10,995), Connells (9,982), haart (8,406), Your Move (6,254) and then another hybrid agency, Yopa, with 6,185.
Countrywide’s Bairstow Eves brand follows with 5,110, and then Housesimple with 4,708.
Savills, Reeds Rains, Winkworth, Bridgfords, Wards and Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward make up the remainder of the top 15.
The figures are revealed in new research covering every postcode in England, Scotland and Wales, which has been compiled from Rightmove Intel data.
The data is for every home marked SSTC last year, meaning that if a home was marked SSTC twice or more during the year, it was still only counted once.
The statistics, compiled by a researcher with access to the data, looks at some 7,000 brands and over 14,200 branches which list on Rightmove.
On this Rightmove list of branches are ‘areas’ and in some cases ‘national’ areas which are covered by online agents.
While these areas cannot be compared with the far smaller territories covered by high street branches, it is still striking to see the numbers.
Top is Purplebricks covering central England with 9,782 properties marked as SSTC last year; Purplebricks London, Scotland, Yorkshire, the North-West, Anglia and Meridian come after this.
Express Estate Agency (national), House Simple (Yorkshire) and Purplebricks (Wales) and Springbok Properties (nationwide) follow.
The first ‘traditional’ agency is in 14th place – a Scottish firm of agents and solicitors, Mov8, with 1,159 SSTC properties on Rightmove last year.
Other Purplebricks, Housesimple and Yopa areas take up a number of the top 40 places, with EweMove’s Yorkshire & Humber business coming in at 40th place. Another online firm, 99home, is in 48th place.
Traditional firms in the top 40 include another Scottish firm, McEwan Fraser Legal, Welsh firm Pinkmove, and Nottingham agent HoldenCopley.
Connells’ Wolverhampton office heads the national high street chains’ in 50th place, with 472 SSTC properties.
The researcher – who we are not identifying – has also produced from Rightmove Intel a list of the top 100 branches excluding ‘nationwide’ agents – effectively, the online/hybrid sector.
Headed by Mov8, McEwan Fraser Legal, Pinkmove and HoldenCopley, Connells’ Wolverhampton branch bounces up to 17th place.
Geographically, the top 100 branches seem well spread, but strikingly, not one is in London – an indication of the limited stock in the capital.
The researcher collected the data between January 1 and December 31 last year, including all house types and flats but not commercial properties, and merged it all on to a single Excel document.
The researcher did the same exercise in 2018, which showed that Purplebricks had 47,636 properties marked as SSTC on Rightmove – little different from the 49,166 last year.
The researcher’s data also shows 14,217 branches on Rightmove last year, compared with 14,262 in 2018. Average sales per branch last year were 60, compared with 59 the year before.
