In 2000 four companies that normally competed for the same house sellers agreed to put their listings in one place. That odd truce is how Britain's biggest property portal began.
The founders were Countrywide and Connells, two big estate agency groups, plus Halifax and Royal & Sun Alliance, which owned agencies through their own financial businesses. Rightmove was incorporated on 16 May 2000, and the website launched that July. There is no single founder to follow. No birthplace, no school, no early failure that public sources let me tell. This is a story about an idea rather than a person.
Rightmove's board called it opportunistic and rejected it, and REA later walked away without a formal offer.
The idea cut against instinct. Agents guard their listings. But a shared site meant a buyer could search every agent at once, and an agent who stayed off it would be invisible. Rightmove charged estate agents for listings and extra advertising, and kept private sellers out. That choice protected its customers and, in time, made the portal hard to leave.
For years it grew quietly in Milton Keynes. It floated on the London Stock Exchange on 15 March 2006, ending its life as a shared agent venture. It bought a majority of Holiday Lettings in 2007, The Outside View in 2016 and Van Mildert in 2019.
People at the top changed. Peter Brooks-Johnson became chief executive in 2017 and resigned in May 2022. Johan Svanstrom took over in February 2023.
The sharpest test was external. In September 2024 Australia's REA Group made an informal approach worth about GBP 5.6bn. Rightmove's board called it opportunistic and rejected it, and REA later walked away without a formal offer.
The margin tells the rest: in 2025 revenue was GBP 425.1M and operating income GBP 287.9M, with net income of GBP 217.1M. Few companies keep two-thirds of sales as operating profit.
The takeaway for a founder is dull in the best way. Rightmove did not win through a famous founder. It won by making every agent's listing more valuable inside one place than outside it. A network that your own customers cannot afford to skip is rarer than a clever product.