by Katie Smith has been an addict for as long as she can remember. Something she feels compelled to do dozens of times a day.
The 30-year-old finds herself repeatedly opening the Rightmove app, despite the fact she has no plans to move anytime soon.
“Rightmove is my porn,” laughs Katie, from Stone, Staffordshire. “It’s like being a modern-day peeping tom,” she says, referring to the number of houses she sees inside, all from the comfort of her smartphone.
Last week, after a day trip to Knutsford, Cheshire, she spent the evening looking at all the houses for sale there – regardless of price. And on a recent weekend in London, she enjoyed looking at “how expensive houses are in Richmond,” which was close to her hotel.
Property portals such as Rightmove, Zoopla and On the Market are gold mines of user data on both home buyers and sellers.
Zoopla told the BBC that 1,860 properties are viewed every minute on its website and app, while for Rightmove this figure is even higher: almost 10,000 properties per minute.
Rightmove recently rejected a fourth takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch’s REA Group, saying the latest offer of £6.2 billion undervalued the company., external and its future prospects, showing how valuable the data it contains is.
The websites themselves recognize that not all of their users actually want to move, so what keeps people scrolling?
