Thank you, Nadia. Morning, everyone. I'm joined by Alison Dolan, our CFO. Hopefully, you've had a chance to see the presentation which we posted this morning. I thought to kick off, I would take a couple of minutes just to give you a quick summary of all those words. I think it's 40 minutes long, so I'll try and do it justice in three minutes. Firstly, I think the network effects at the heart of our business are really stronger than ever. We've had record traffic and leads in 2021. Traffic was up 15% on the already record number in 2020, and leads were up over 27%.
In terms of customer numbers, I think we saw a continuation of the trend from H1, with estate agent numbers building back and new homes developments continuing to sell out due to the imbalance in supply and demand. I think our performance in 2021 really underlines the strength of the business model, both in weaker and stronger property markets. Our ARPA growth of GBP 101, compared to that in 2019 really shows that we can build back strongly. I think it's worth drawing out the momentum in 2021, which we'll carry forward into 2022. The December to December ARPA growth, so taking 2020 ARPA, December 2020 ARPA and comparing it to December 2021's ARPA, was actually the highest we've ever achieved in a 12-month period.
Another great demonstration of that, which Alison refers to in the presentation, is if one looks at the second half agency ARPA growth, which was actually double that we usually see in the second half of the year. Obviously that momentum, because it's second half, really, really helps us into 2022. ARPA itself was driven by healthy upgrades to Optimiser 2020. We had 1,400 in the year and an average uplift of over GBP 300. Again, a continuation of that story we spoke about six months ago. Our product delivery in the year was really strong. We had four product launches during the year, customer product launches, all of which, as you will see in the presentation, are achieving good revenue rates, run rates already.
We've also made significant progress with digitizing the property market through our mortgage and tenant services, ambitions. There, as we've discussed previously, what we're really doing is we're sort of investing in the momentum of the future. Looking forward, I know there are worries about interest rates and inflation, and what the impacts will be on the property market. I've got no doubt actually that, of course, the cost of living rises will really impact a number of people. If one looks at the data, home movers themselves, I think their appetite to move has not been dimmed. Looking at our most up-to-date data, which runs until the start of this week, the market's still strong.
Demand's up 16% on last year, and sales are being agreed at about a similar rate as this time last year. Again, just reminding you that this time last year, we all thought we were approaching the stamp duty deadline. It was an elevated rate of sales agreed. In terms of transactions, things that are just coming through the pipe now, according to HMRC, transactions in January were about the same as 2020 and 9% ahead of 2019. I think it's not unreasonable looking forward to think that transactions will be perhaps at a more normal run rate, probably somewhere between 1.1 and 1.3 million. Given the lack of supply, we're also predicting that house prices will probably rise by about 5% this year.
There is still a lack of new stock coming to market. There are a few rays of sunshine. We've seen valuation requests through our lead tools up about 10% on this time last year. Some of that now is just starting to come through in terms of new stock to market. That's positive. Agents are certainly reporting a lot more valuation activity than they saw this time last year. Looking at Rightmove, I think 2022, we'll see further small gains in agency numbers, but I don't see that the supply and demand imbalance for new homes is really gonna change in the next six months.
I think overall, as I say, we'll see a small gain in agent numbers, but that will be offset by a further small fall in new homes numbers. Given all that momentum from last year, I think before someone asks me the question, I think ARPA growth will be somewhere between sort of GBP 95-GBP 105 in the year. Really positive. In terms of innovation, our innovation for next year or for this year will continue at a pace, as detailed in the presentation. We've got a plan for another three new products in 2022. We're also pushing hard on our efforts to make transactions more digital.
A real focus in mortgages to bring the mortgage in principle onto Rightmove in the first half of this year, which will be a big step. It's a complex part of the process, and one that confuses and frustrates consumers. We think we can make a real difference. As I say, hoping to get that on site will be the first place to bring together search and mortgages. We're hoping to do that by the first half of the year and give us a baseline to optimize from. In terms of the rental transaction flow, lots of really interesting progress in 2021.
The first half of this year, gonna see some really exciting new deliveries with our process flow that will enable agents and tenants to communicate entirely electronically all the way from leads to keys. That's really exciting. We'll see that launch towards the end of the first half, along with our new Open Banking referencing in quarter one, which will provide real efficiency to tenants. It's about a third quicker to apply and about 20% quicker to process. That's exciting. Rather than me babbling on further, I'm sure you've got lots of questions for us. Perhaps I'll stop there and we can take some questions.
Thank you, dear participants. We will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from the line of William Packer from BNP Paribas. Please ask your question.
Hi, Peter. Thanks for taking my questions. Three for me, please. Thanks for providing the ARPA growth range and the membership guidance, 95-105 and flat, I think. Could you just help us think through what the, kind of upside and downside risks are there? How do you go to the top of the range? How do you go to the bottom? Is it primarily the performance of new home that drives that? Any color there would be helpful. Secondly, on cost guidance, I suppose in the release, the kind of key outlook, item was that you were now thinking of a range of 25%-27% of costs as potential revenue versus 25% for FY 2022 as you commented, I think it was at the half year results. You know, what's changed?
Is that saving because you beat on costs in 2021 or is that more product investment? Obviously, the market's pretty focused on that right now, in the wider classified space. I suppose related to that, finally, could you kind of give us a little bit of an update on where you are in your product development areas like mortgages and lettings, and when we should start to see monetization? Perhaps any view on commission sharing, which some of your peers are exploring as a revenue model and whether that works for you. Thank you.
Thanks, Will. Right. I'll talk about sort of the upside risk. Perhaps Alison can talk a little bit more about cost guidance, and then I'll come back and talk about that transaction product stuff. What would push towards the top side of that guidance? It's probably not new homes. I think, yeah, what one can see already, as I say, with new homes, it's a supply and demand imbalance. It takes a while to build a house. Given what we see already, I don't think that really turns around in the first half of this year. I wouldn't think that's what drives us.
I think what the upside risk comes from, you know, these new products that we launched last year, that if you've seen the presentation, some numbers in there, you know, I think they're generating a run rate of about GBP 30 million already. Actually, how do they grow? I'm really optimistic. I think the guys have done a cracking job and shared a little bit more about how we think about products, which I think is—it's a—we've got a really thoughtful strategy in there. So I think will we see more adoption of those products? I'm pretty optimistic, but wouldn't wanna promise it just yet. Does that get to your upside risk?
Yes. The sort of key driver of getting to 105 as well, the success of the new products, which has done pretty well in 2021.
Yeah.
Just the
You see that come out through agency offer. Maybe Alison, would you like to talk about costs?
Sure. Hi, Will. We're continuing to guide to margin for 2022 of 74%-75%, slightly narrower than the 25%-27% of costs that's in the release. That's the first thing I would say. No structural change at all in the cost base, and slide 10 in the presentation gives you a very good guide as to the categories of cost. It's pretty much a mirror image of what we're expecting for 2022.
Bit of an increase in people costs, and that's from new heads in the product development teams, bit of salary inflation, bit of growth in G&A as COVID savings unwind. The bridge shows that they decreased in 2021. We don't expect to see that this coming year. You know, broadly, no change in the rest of the cost base. We'll see some increase, but reiterate margin guidance of 74%-75%.
Actually on that, just adding to that, Will, I sort of understand your concern. I think there's two things to think about. There's the sort of operational margin. There's the developing product margin, and there's the operational margin. You know, we still, if you look at our products that we talk about in the release, everything we deliver is digital. So they still have very high operational margins, which I know it's not exactly the same as a lot of peers are talking about. Yeah, rest assured, we really care about profitability of our products. As Alison said, it's a bit of timing and a bit of head count.
In terms of the sort of slightly more transactional work in mortgages and rental services, I think as I said before, we're slightly further ahead in transactional services in that journey. We are now monetizing. I think we've got lots more to do, and we're still focusing on building a really strong platform. Super excited about the transactional flow, which we can talk more about, perhaps at the half year, which we'll launch in the first half. But also, quite interestingly for us, right at the end of last year, we launched two new landlord insurance products. Just to remind you, we are effectively an insurance broker for landlord insurance.
We don't take the risk, but we work with the underwriters to create insurance products, and this is a first for us. We've seen really sort of heartening uptake six weeks into the new year because what those products do is they leverage the quality of our references. We've been able to. One product now has got unlimited cover for a landlord, which is new to market. The other product at a lower price point sort of covers the basics, if you will. We're really excited by that, and we are starting to see the monetization, but our absolute focus right now is let's build a strong platform. It's exactly the same story with mortgages. The big push is let's build a strong platform.
Let's really take some of the mystery out of what you can afford with the MIP. Super excited. Again, if you look at the numbers in the deck, the difference we've made to the conversion rate to the top of the funnel, I think you'd be really heartened that we're onto something. We're very fortunate that we can continue to work through that through the mortgage in principle, and actually we can take our time to get it right rather than sort of slightly going off, frankly, half-cocked and just chasing revenue. We're really trying to up those conversion rates before we push on the monetization.
Still, I think as both Alison and I said last year in various forms, still believe that both of those opportunities are sort of GBP 20 million profit opportunities in four years time. Nothing's changed my view on that. We're working to a plan. In terms of commission share, yeah, absolutely know that some of our peers are doing that in other markets where perhaps the market structure is slightly different. It's fascinating. When we talk to our customers, commission share is sort of. It becomes a really negative conversation. I know probably for all of us, we think if, particularly if you're small and don't do many transactions, commission share sounds super logical, or you only pay when you transact.
They find it sort of impinges on their good work, and it suggests something quite negative to their ego. I'd never say never on commission share. I think it's just got a slightly uncomfortable sentiment side. I don't think it's particularly likely in the U.K. Interestingly, when talking to peers in some other markets, they've done the same sort of research and got the same feedback. Maybe it's a particularly sort of Anglo-Saxon view on the world as opposed to a slightly more European view.
Well, thanks for the call.
Welcome.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ciarán Donnelly from Liberum. Please ask your question.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just one from me, actually. You talk about retiring Optimiser 15, quite simply, kind of if you could give us some insight into your views on the package structure going forward. Will it remain a three-tier structure, or would you look to kind of make any changes to perhaps increase the yield of the agency base? Thanks.
Oh, okay. I'll try and be brief, because this is a topic I can talk about for about four hours, so someone might have to stop me. Probably worth starting, actually. I'll come back to Opti 15. It's worth remembering that our package structure is quite different to many package structures. They're sort of bottom thresholds, and within them, I think in the presentation, we showed some of the numbers. Customers can buy more product and put them into package. The package is flexible. We don't need sort of five to 10 package levels to optimize, unlike some different package structures in other industries. That's worth remembering.
In terms of long term, I think again what we've seen in the past is typically our package structure we renew sort of probably every five to seven years. We're at about year five of the current package structure, so I think we've got a few more years to go before we give it an overhaul, sort of suits an overhaul. In terms of optimizing, I think we've shared in the presentation some really fascinating data, which is after a year, an Optimiser 2020 customer on average has spent another GBP 93. So if you took the amount they were spending when they upgraded to Optimiser 2020 at about GBP 300 uplift. 12 months later, they then decided to spend another GBP 93.
That really sort of shows the power of our products and the power of the package structure. We don't have to keep revising the package structure to get people to move up the ladder. Our opportunities for now are get more people into Optimiser 2020, show them the value of the products, and then they'll grow up with themselves, which is a brilliant conversation, but it's almost not a conversation. It's even more brilliant than that. The other opportunity is the Essential customers, now with our independent customers, is our largest customer group, helping them see the value, getting them to sort of to try sample and then getting them to upgrade. Because the other number, which I think is quite interesting to me, at least, is the trigger spend.
The amount the customer spends before then jump making a big product spend uplift is about GBP 80. If we can help Essential customers spend GBP 80, see the value, I'm fairly confident our data would suggest they would upgrade. We need to work on that. That's a bit of a longer thing. We're currently trialing a few ways of helping them see that value. In terms of your first part of your question, Optimiser 2015, it's really following the great upsell success we've had in 2021. It's now a case of we're tidying up our package structure. I am very excited to stop saying Optimiser 2020 and be able to just call it Optimiser again.
It's sort of always in the plan that what we would do is we'd wait until we had the majority of customers upgraded, and then we would retire 15. It really is a tidy up to go back to a three-package structure rather than a sort of three-and-a-half structure that we've had in the interim. Does that make sense, Kieran?
Yeah, that's brilliant. Thank you.
If you want the other three hours of the conversation, give me a call.
I'll call you later.
That wasn't convincing.
Thank you very much. The next question comes from the line of Michelle Yao from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.
Hi, good morning to you. Lisa Yang from Goldman. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, on your offer guidance, thanks very much for giving that. I'm just wondering, given what you achieved in 2021, and if I look at the I think that slide in your presentation, slide nine, it shows a really improved momentum and a very strong active rate. Do you think that could be a bit conservative? I'm just wondering, you know, what could why there would be a bit of a slowdown in that improving momentum into 2022. Related to that, I'm just wondering like how much of that output growth that you're expecting is sort of already secured. The second question is on the pricing strategy for 2022.
I think last year you talked about increasing prices across a certain percentage of your customer base. I'm just wondering how that has panned out and how you're thinking about raising your prices. You know, what percentage of agents should see any price increase and what's the magnitude of that. The third question is again on the output growth. Historically, you've been growing more around GBP 80-GBP 90. And obviously you're guiding now to GBP 95-GBP 105. Do you think that's the new normal, or is there anything specific to 2022 which means, you know, from 2023 onwards, we should go back to more the historical rate, or on the contrary we should expect GBP 100 for every year going forward? Thank you.
You're welcome. Right. Let me try and work through those three. Maybe outlook guidance, are we being conservative? I think I'd let you decide that. We have a habit, I'll sort of perhaps defer and not really comment. Yeah, I'll let you decide whether we're being conservative. How much of it is secure? Well, a lot of it. Some of it comes from obviously that momentum in the second half, so that's really positive for us. Some of it will come from product upsell, where obviously we're only, well, as I said, we're only a few months into the year, so not much of that has happened, but 1/6, guess.
The other thing, there is an element which is about 40% of it will come from price, and we've communicated to about 20% of people on the plan so far. That's going entirely as we would expect, given our 17 years of history at raising prices. That looks pretty much on norm. Yes, a chunk is secure, but there's still quite a lot of work for us to do. In terms of the price rise, broadly, the price rise plan actually looks not dissimilar to 2021, both in terms of number of customers, well, the final number of customers. The laydown through the year, which again, a reminder for some of you who've known us for a long time, is even now different.
It's slightly more spread through the year than it used to be, given the price rises we pulled forward into 2021. They will occur again towards the end of 2022. In terms of magnitude of price, yeah, about 10% again. They're pretty similar actually, from a planning perspective. Again, as I say, the 20% that we've already communicated feels really encouraging, feels very similar to the success we had in 2021. Now, you had a third question about output, and I've written it down. I can't remember it.
80-90.
Is 95-105 the new 80-90, or if you're as old as me, the new 60? Yeah, I think so. We like to move forward. Does that answer?
Thanks. That's really helpful. Yeah, no, that's great. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Miriam Josiah from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.
Great. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. Firstly, just on the margin of the new digital products. I think you said that you're still expecting them to deliver a high margin, but could you sort of run through any additional ongoing costs you may have on some of these products once you've passed the development stage, just to get a sense of what the margin differential might be versus the core advertising products? And then secondly, I guess it seems like there's a lot of product development going on. Just thinking, wondering how you're thinking about how much of the agent commission pool longer term you'll be able to capture as these new products start to come through. On the vendor lead side, clearly there's a lot of popularity there.
How are you thinking about product development in the lead generation business and how are you thinking about pricing that and the opportunity to really accelerate pricing growth there? Thanks.
Right. Where should we start? Margin on new products. Most of the new products, the four we launched last year, the four we're going to launch this year, they are digital advertising products. Fundamentally, they're 100% margin at the margin because to operate, they're purely digital. I don't know if that was your question. I'm sort of hesitating because I'm not quite sure that was your question. Was that your question, Miriam?
Yeah. All of the new products. I guess some of them are just advertising, but then I guess with the mortgage and tenant products it-
Mortgage and tenant services. Mortgages, fundamentally, we are heading down the digital route. It will be similar. You know, we're not intending to be a mortgage broker. We're not intending to have rooms full of mortgage brokers. That will be very similar to the marketing products. Tenant services, we're on a sort of development path. Currently, performing a reference involves human input. It's one of the benefits actually of the new Open Banking reference is it will require less human input.
One of the reasons, I think I've spoken about probably a while ago now, one of the reasons for choosing Van Mildert to purchase Van Mildert is it didn't have a massive market share, so therefore we haven't got a business with hundreds and hundreds of people in it. As we digitize it, we can increase our volume without increasing the number of people. That will increase margin. The insurance products, which is a big part of the opportunity, I think, in rental, those are because we're acting effectively as a broker, again, sort of digitally, they're very high margin. That's those things. Agent commission pool. I probably might have to whisper.
Apologies, because I'm slightly embarrassed that I think our share of agent commission pools have gone down because the commission pool's gone up and we haven't gone up quite as fast. We're probably now about 6% of agent revenue. Again, I think one of the things hopefully that comes through in the presentation, and all feedback offline is welcome. One of the things that comes through is we believe we can capture more of their marketing spend. Typically an agent spends about 15% of revenue on marketing, and we're less than half. We think we can help them expand the amount they spend on marketing. Both by the efficiency tools that we deliver, have always delivered, things like the Best Price Guide, which was run a record 14 million times last year by agents.
Things like the tenancy flow, actually not only does it create great opportunities for us, it creates a load of efficiency for agents. Hopefully that will come through and they can then spend more on marketing. Also as we've put in the deck, we're going to launch some more training options that will lead to an NVQ Level 3 for them by the end of this year, which will save them some money. I guess simplistically, I believe we can win more of the marketing pie and we can make the marketing pie bigger for agents. That's, I think, where we are, and got a long road to go there. Vendor lead products.
Yeah, I think it's sort of amusing to me 'cause suddenly vendor lead products are trendy, but we launched our first vendor lead product in 2012, I think, and then our second one in 2018. They're really good and again, we think slightly differently to some others. They're wholly digital products. We put quite a lot of underpinning work in there last year to increase the inventory, to increase their performance and therefore increase inventory. You'll see from the deck that vendor leads increased by 40% since 2019. Real sort of testament to the work that's gone in there. All of our products are about generating vendor opportunities for agents.
Whether that be the top of funnel consideration stuff that the brand marketing that agents do, which is probably a U.K. specific thing. I understand it's quite difficult to draw parallels with continental peers 'cause it doesn't happen so much. That behavior doesn't happen so much in continental Europe. It happens in Australia. I think we've got lots more to do. Interesting. You've got an interesting product launching probably Q3 this year for agents, which is further towards the top of funnel, but is still fundamentally about generating vendor opportunities for agents. I think if you have time in the deck, there's a graph that shows the number of instructions that agents win versus the number of units of products agents buy. You can really see the impact of that. Hopefully that's covered all your. Has that covered everything, Miriam?
Yep, that has. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Joe Barnet-Lamb from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question.
Excellent. Thank you, Peter and Alison. Just a couple left from me. The first one's just on Optimiser, and you're obviously very excited to just be able to refer to it as Optimiser rather than Optimiser 2020. What is the price differential between Optimiser 20 and Optimiser 15? And if so, how material has the migration been for ARPA in FY 2021 and will it be for FY 2022? Then my second one is just with regards to the balance sheet. Given where the share price is and your positivity on the future, would you consider being more aggressive on the buyback at current levels? Thank you.
Okay. Optimiser, yeah, I am. You know I love simplicity, Joe. Yes, just being able to call it Optimiser again is a delight. The price differential on average, it depends where you are because again, back to the sort of first point that our packages are threshold. You can have not every Optimiser 15 is spending the same amount of money. Some are well beyond threshold. On average, that step's about GBP 300 to give you a sense. That's built into our sort of ARPA prediction. No, I'm not allowed to call it a prediction, am I? Our vague ARPA guidance for this year. Is that where you were asking for?
Yeah. No, that's perfect. We can do the math on that. Thank you.
Balance sheet, that sounds like an answer from a question.
Hi, Joe. Morning. Look, the policy on the buyback is that the buyback really is the balancing number to return all surplus cash to shareholders. The policy is to grow the dividend, firstly in line with underlying EPS. The priority always is organic investment in the business, and then we will use the buyback as a way of returning the remainder of surplus cash. Because we do that and manage to a very low balance sheet cash number, the only way for us really to ramp up the buyback program would be to gear up in order to do that. It's something we've looked at before.
There are clearly pros and cons to it, but we have no plans to do it, certainly in the short term. I think we're pretty happy with not being a geared business. There are definitely operational advantages to it. No plans right now.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Joe.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of William Packer from BNP Paribas. Please ask your question.
Hi, Peter. Just one clarification to Lisa's question earlier. Just wanted to make sure I heard correctly. It's right to think of 95%-105% as the new normal for ARPA growth for the medium term, not just for 2022. Thanks.
Yes.
Thanks for confirming.
Quite clear.
That's it from me. Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from the line of Giles Thorne from Jefferies. Please ask your question.
Thank you. My first question is on total memberships and Zoopla out there suggesting that they've now got a higher level of total memberships than Rightmove. Given whole of market listings has been a big part of your consumer value proposition for forever, really. Is this a metric that you recognize? Is it something that particularly concerns you? Any thoughts there would be useful. Second question, yes, I recognize there is a lot of talk in the market around vendor lead. Some of the other products out there are suggesting astronomical returns on investment for agents. I'd be curious, and it was a question that was asked earlier, but I'd be curious again to know what you're intending to do to invest in Opportunity Manager or the Optimiser package to increase ROI or basically better predict potential service.
Then lastly, mortgage in principle being offered on site is evidently a bonus for consumers on this journey. In the U.K., to state the obvious, you have a pretty well-cultivated price comparison website sector that's incredibly well-entrenched and not going anywhere. I'm just curious how you interplay against the consumer's awareness of those sites that I'm presuming will have a better, more varied mortgage panel than yourself. Any thoughts there? Thanks.
Thanks, Giles. Total membership, I don't know if you've got the presentation in front of you. On slide 19, I've included a stock penetration chart because there are a number of different ways of counting a branch, which might sound slightly bemusing, but really happy to take you through it one day. There's lots of different ways of counting it, and I would suggest that we're not all counting it in the same way. Rather than get into all of that, the thing that really matters, as you point out, is how much of total available stock is listed on your board. That's the real consumer measure.
Because, again, if we are totally straight with each other, having one customer who lists five properties a year is very different to having one customer who lists 10,000 properties a year. I thought rather than sort of get into all that, take that away and just show you total stock penetration. If you look at the slide or the chart bottom right, slide 19, it broadly says we're at mid-95% and we're still at mid-95%, which is, I think, the number it's been almost for as long as I've been at Rightmove, which is 16 years. It's pretty much stable. That's the answer to the first question, but you're right, having the stock is important. Secondly, vendor lead investment.
We're investing in all sorts of things and as I say, it's across the spectrum. I think it's very beguiling to get hung up about the final mile delivery, if you like, of the vendor lead. You do have to concentrate on the whole marketing funnel in the U.K. On average, I think it's 2.8. A vendor will invite 2.8 people out to value their home. If you're not in that 2.8, everything else becomes somewhat irrelevant. What we do, that's driven by brand, is pure consideration. Does the agent sell properties like mine, is the key question, which if you remember, is exactly what Sold by Me, the product that was launched in 2019, is driving at.
Because what we do see from our vendor lead products is it's all very well offering a great product, but agents get deselected if their brand isn't prevalent. You have to be a bit careful, yeah. We can generate, yeah, it's really easy. Our tech guys are really smart. We can generate lots of leads. We can send them to more and more and more agents. It reduces the quality. What we're focusing on is sort of all the things that make us unique as a platform, which is about our scale, about things like thinking about products as features. On slide 23, there's a collection of neat words which effectively describe our vendor opportunity strategy. Really fascinating. Give you a little anecdote about Sold by Me.
Sold by Me is the feature that lists properties that an agent has sold near where a potential vendor lives. It exists within the search channel, but it shows the properties that are near where they live 'cause vendors, because people share that with us. They don't share that with anyone else. That's really powerful personally. That smart targeting is really powerful. We had some feedback. The guys were doing some consumer research on a different feature on the page. The consumer said, "Oh, I really like that feature at the bottom of the page. It really helps me understand what's going on." The guys were a bit confused, frankly, Giles, 'cause they didn't know what we were doing. What feature is that? It was Sold by Me they were talking about.
Of course, what that does, it means you just get real engagement 'cause it doesn't feel like a hard sell to people. It feels like a really useful feature. Yeah, products as a feature is a really, really important part of our strategy. You mentioned Opportunity Manager. That again, I think leverages what we know about consumers. The first party data we have, it's just so helpful. We don't have to make really radical predictions and all the difficulty and rightly, in my view, dangers that come with that in terms of data privacy. We're sharing some things people tell us about themselves.
Our strategy is really to work across the funnel and think about vendor opportunities of which vendor leads are one part, and the return on investment, again, I sort of refer you back to that chart that just shows the number of leads versus the number of products people buy. I mean, it's pretty remarkable.
[Mitt].
[Mitt]. Why are we different to price comparison? Well, firstly, I think there's only one that is doing a full mortgage in principle on-site. Price comparison, you have to be a bit careful with mortgages because anybody can offer a headline great mortgage rate, and then actually you find that most consumers can't access the rate because they don't have the loan to value or they don't have the credit score. First of all, mortgage is a bit more complicated than perhaps other products. I think the real advantage we've got is you have to think about different mindsets. Mortgage is a part of the purchase journey. How much can I afford? Now can I get the mortgage? Now can I move in? Whereas price comparison is how do I optimize my outgoings?
It's a very different intent, and it's actually we see exactly the same in rentals. Where we offer insurance to tenants, we don't offer them price comparison insurance 'cause that's not what it's about. We offer them certainty and speed. We think by bringing together search and the detail that the mortgage in principle will give, and it will be a full lend of act mortgage in principle, which might have up to 118 questions. It's not a sort of guesstimate. Then I think that will put us in a really different position to the mindset of price comparison. Price comparison is really about remortgage, not about house purchase, first time buyer mortgage.
If you look at the conversion rates, yeah, I think we're showing that we've got a really interested consumer base, and it's up to us to deliver them a really great service. Does that get there for you, Giles?
Understood. Just one follow-up on the point around social memberships and the chart on slide 19. Has there been a closing of the gap on all the market listings?
Sorry, you broke up. Has there been a closing of the gap with?
Yeah, that's right. Sorry, I was leaning back, and I'm speaking through my laptop speaker. I should get a headset. But anyway, yes. Has there been a closing of the gap in total market listings? If you know, put membership numbers to one side and listings, has there been a closing of the gap?
Closing of the gap? Yeah. What we're seeing actually, which I think I talked about before, but what we're seeing is a slow migration back from those sort of 2,500 branches that led to go to OnTheMarket when OnTheMarket had the one other portal rule. Since that was dropped, we're seeing very slowly those branches migrate back to Zoopla. Yeah, Zoopla are returning towards the position that they might have had in 2014 in terms of market share.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes to the line of Gareth Davies from Numis. Please ask your question.
Hi. Morning, guys. Just two follow-ups from me. First, going back to Optimiser 15, is that a switch off a H1 or a H2 event? In terms of the tail of people who you wouldn't have expected to have moved across, is that at all meaningful? As such, on past experience, do they all then move when you switch it off to? That should be a decent step up in penetration for one of the Optimiser 2020 product. Just a little more color on that.
Then second one, the commercial market, I suppose the mindset in the market has always felt like the biggest hindrance to that being a kinda real success and just the desire for market participants to move online. Can you talk about how that shifted through the pandemic and sort of any optimism you've got there for a pretty strong performance albeit relatively small still in the context of the group? Thank you.
Thanks, Gareth. I'll talk about Optimiser 'cause I love it, and Alison's gonna talk about commercial. [Optimiser] 15 switch off. Yeah, majority will be first half. There'll be some that go into the second half. We've got some customers who are on contracts, which we will respect. That will get tidied up in second half, most in the first half. Previous experience would suggest. What we're doing is we're saying to customers, "You know, we're retiring this package. We would suggest you move up to Opti 20. Here's why it's awesome." Optims manage things like that. Maybe we'll get Charles out selling it. That's what we do there, and then.
We do, of course, we would say there is an option. You can go to Essential if that's your thing. History would suggest that probably when faced with a choice, about 90% of agents will move up and 10% will go to Enhanced. I don't think we'd see anything particularly different this time around.
Is that meaningful in terms of penetration, in terms of the number of people left on it? Is it 90% of an exceptionally small number, so it's irrelevant, or is it kinda couple of percent onto 2020 penetration? Does that make sense?
Effectively, actually, there'll be a slide. I can't do the mathematics because I'm not a fast counter. There's a slide where you could work it out because we show you how many are on 15 and how many are on 20.
Gareth, the 2020 number had about 10% of independent agents on Opti 15. 10% of independent agents on Opti 2020, 21% on 15. That will now reverse. 30% once we get everybody migrated.
Perfect. Thank you.
Yeah. If you slide 25, Gareth.
Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm going, Gareth. Sorry, Nadia. Just the second part of that question on the commercial sector, Gareth. Yes, you're absolutely right. It is less digital really as a sector than residential has become. It's probably about seven or eight years behind residential in terms of the move to digital. The pandemic has helped, I think, to accelerate some of the move to digital. Behaviors have undoubtedly changed and the supply and the demand dynamics have also changed as well. If you think about where demand increased, which, you know, we saw a huge increase in the demand for industrial space, warehouse space, for example, as everybody was ordering from home. Clearly a big drop in the demand for offices and for retail space.
As these changing demand dynamics move around, I think the old kind of networks of contracts and the way in which things had operated before have also started to change. Certainly for us, we have seen an uplift in the number of listings on the site, both by property owners and usage of our site to look for commercial property by occupiers. I would expect to see, for example, search for office space and office listings carry on becoming more digital in the way that it did both during 2020 and 2021, and similarly with industrial space. You know, we now are the largest portal for commercial property listings and so again, you know, big plans for growth in that revenue line. Does that answer the question?
Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a last reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad.
Well, Nadia, I think we've exhausted questions.
Dear speakers, there are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand over back to yourself so for closing remarks.
Well, thank you everyone. Thanks for making the time. Actually, thanks for giving us more of your morning than usual. I hope you have a good rest of the day. As ever, if you've got follow-up questions, please just get in touch with Alison or myself. Thank you.