How to Find Estate Agents Not on Rightmove or Zoopla

Most UK estate agents do advertise on Rightmove and Zoopla, because that is where the buyers are. The agents you won't find there fall into three camps: firms that list exclusively on OnTheMarket, small independents cutting portal costs, and discreet "off-market" agents selling privately. You can track them down by walking your high street, searching OnTheMarket directly, asking for personal recommendations, and checking local Facebook groups. But be honest with yourself about why you're looking: for a normal sale where you want the best price, staying off Rightmove usually means fewer buyers and a slower, weaker result — not a clever shortcut.

Why would an estate agent not be on Rightmove or Zoopla?

Let's clear up the biggest misconception first. There is no secret club of superior agents who've turned their backs on the portals. The overwhelming majority of UK estate agents pay for Rightmove and Zoopla precisely because that's where buyers look. When an agent isn't on them, there's almost always a practical reason behind it, and it's worth understanding which one applies before you read anything into it.

The most common reason is cost. Rightmove is not cheap for agents. Fees are negotiated branch by branch, and while a large corporate chain might pay a few hundred pounds per branch each month, a small independent can be quoted £1,500 to £2,000 a month for a single office. Feelings about this run hot in the industry — more than 250 agencies are currently party to a £1.5 billion legal claim against Rightmove over what they see as excessive and unfair fees. A one or two-person agency working on thin margins might decide that bill isn't worth it and rely on Zoopla, OnTheMarket, their own website and word of mouth instead.

The second reason is OnTheMarket. Since being bought by the American commercial-property giant CoStar in December 2023, OnTheMarket has grown quickly — visits up around 55%, listing stock up close to 47%, and lead generation up over 90% in the two years since. CoStar is openly building it into a serious challenger to Rightmove, backed by the same firm behind the US portal Homes.com. OnTheMarket has historically leaned on "Only With Us" listings, where an agent shows a property on OnTheMarket exclusively, or at least 24 hours before it appears anywhere else. So you will genuinely find homes on OnTheMarket that aren't yet on Rightmove or Zoopla.

A quick word of caution on that. The Competition and Markets Authority has previously warned agents that collectively agreeing to boycott a portal is likely unlawful — each agent must decide independently which portals to use. That history matters because it tells you the "one portal" landscape is messier and less principled than some marketing suggests. An agent being on OnTheMarket only doesn't make them better or worse. It's a commercial choice.

The third camp is the discount and online agents. Some ultra-cheap or DIY-style services list on a limited set of portals, or ask you to do more of the legwork yourself. And finally there's the genuinely off-market world — agents who deliberately sell certain homes quietly, without any public advertising at all. That's a real and legitimate practice, but it's a niche, and it's the part most people misunderstand. More on that shortly.

Where UK buyers actually are: the portal reality

Before you spend a weekend hunting for an agent who's dodged the big portals, look honestly at the numbers, because they should shape your decision.

Rightmove is not just first, it's dominant. By its own FY25 reporting it accounts for around 89% of the time UK users spend across the major property portals. In practical terms, if a serious buyer in your town is browsing this weekend, the odds are overwhelming that they're on Rightmove. Zoopla has a loyal audience and useful tools, and OnTheMarket is closing the gap under CoStar's investment, but neither comes close to Rightmove's reach yet.

Here's why that matters to you as a seller. Your sale price is set by competition between buyers. The more of them who see your home, the more competition you generate, and competition is what pushes offers up towards — and occasionally past — your asking price. Cutting your audience is the single easiest way to leave money on the table. So when someone suggests an agent who isn't on Rightmove, the first question isn't "how do I find them?" It's "why would I want fewer buyers?"

Portal	Rough buyer reach	Best known for	Cost pressure on agents
Rightmove	Dominant (~85–89% of time spent)	Widest audience, first place buyers look	High — the main cost agents grumble about
Zoopla	Strong second (~10%)	Sold-price data, estimates, tools	Moderate
OnTheMarket	Third, growing under CoStar	"Only With Us" early listings	Lower, historically free periods for agents

How to actually find agents who aren't on the big portals

Suppose you have a good reason — you want a discreet sale, or you simply want to know your local options. Here's how to find agents operating outside Rightmove and Zoopla, in rough order of usefulness.

Walk your high street and note the boards

This sounds old-fashioned, and it works. Independent agents who aren't spending on Rightmove still put boards up outside properties and still have a shopfront. Drive or walk around the streets you'd want to buy in, note the agents' names on the "For Sale" and "Sold" boards, then look them up. An agent with lots of local boards but a thin Rightmove presence is exactly the kind you're after — and the density of their boards tells you how active they really are, which a website never will.

Search OnTheMarket directly

Because of the "Only With Us" model, OnTheMarket is the single best place to find listings and agents you won't see on Rightmove first. Search your postcode there specifically, not just on the big two. If a home appears on OnTheMarket and nowhere else, you've found an agent using that route.

Ask people who've recently moved

Personal recommendation still outperforms almost everything. A neighbour, colleague or friend who sold in the last year will tell you plainly which local agent was sharp and which was hopeless — including the smaller firms that never show up in a Google search. This is also how you find the genuinely good off-market operators, who rarely advertise for the simple reason that they don't need to.

Check local Facebook groups and community pages

Town and neighbourhood Facebook groups, and community noticeboards, are where a lot of quiet, low-cost selling happens now. Some small agents and private sellers post here first. It's hit-and-miss and you need your wits about you, but it surfaces options the portals never will.

Look at auction houses and specialist buyers

Property auctioneers and genuine cash-buying firms operate largely outside the estate-agent portal model. If your underlying reason for avoiding Rightmove is speed or a difficult property rather than price, these routes deserve a look — see our guides to cash house buyers and the best house-buying companies.

The honest bit: should you actually want an off-portal agent?

Now the part most articles skip, because it's less flattering to the premise of the question. For the great majority of sellers, deliberately choosing an agent who isn't on Rightmove is a mistake.

The logic is simple. You are trying to get the most money, or the fastest sale, or both. Both goals are served by more buyers seeing your home. Rightmove is where the buyers are. Take your property off it and you've cut your audience to a fraction on day one — the very moment a listing gets its biggest surge of attention. A home that launches quietly and only reaches the wider market later rarely recreates that first-week buzz.

So who is the off-market route genuinely right for? A short, honest list:

• High-value and prime homes where the seller wants privacy, controlled viewings, and to avoid the whole street knowing their business. Discreet sales are a real, established practice at the top of the market.
• Celebrity, sensitive or security-conscious sellers who have good reason not to broadcast their address and photos of their interior to the entire internet.
• Sellers who value certainty and speed over top price — for example during a divorce, a probate sale, or to stop a repossession — where a quiet, quick transaction beats a drawn-out public campaign.
• Unusual or hard-to-value properties that benefit from an agent's little black book of specific buyers rather than mass exposure.

If you don't see yourself in that list, my advice is blunt: use an agent who's on Rightmove, and pick them on the quality of their marketing and their track record on your streets, not on which portals they've opted out of. And whatever route you choose, get an independent view of your home's value first — our house valuation guide walks you through it.

A worked example: what off-portal reach really costs you

Numbers make this concrete. Imagine two identical three-bed semis on the same street, both listed at £280,000.

House A goes on with a full-service agent, live on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket from launch. In its first week it gets six viewings — the typical opening rush a fresh, well-placed listing enjoys — and within a month it has three interested parties. Two of them nudge each other upward, and it sells for £281,500, a shade over asking, in about five weeks of marketing.

House B goes with an agent who's dropped Rightmove to save money and lists on OnTheMarket and their own site only. The home is just as nice, but far fewer buyers ever see it. It gets two viewings in the first fortnight, no competing offers, and after seven weeks the seller accepts £272,000 from the only serious buyer, simply to get moving.

Same house, same street, same month. The difference — roughly £9,500 — isn't about the agent's skill. It's about who saw the listing. That's the real price of reduced exposure, and it dwarfs the few hundred pounds the second agent "saved" on portal fees. Reach is not a luxury; it's the mechanism that sets your price.

Where online and hybrid agents fit in

One group deserves its own mention, because it confuses a lot of sellers: the online and hybrid agents. These firms — the low-fixed-fee, internet-first outfits — usually are on Rightmove and Zoopla, so they don't strictly answer the "not on the portals" question. But people often lump them into the same search, so let's be straight about them.

The pitch is simple: a flat fee of a few hundred pounds instead of a percentage commission, which on a £300,000 home can look like a big saving against a typical 1–1.5% high-street fee. Sometimes it is. The catch is what you give up. Many online models charge upfront whether or not they sell, handle viewings remotely or hand them to you, and are less motivated to fight for the last few thousand pounds because they've already been paid. A traditional agent only gets paid on completion, which sharpens their incentive to actually close the deal at a strong price.

My honest take: a hybrid agent can work well for an easy-to-sell home in a busy area where the property nearly sells itself, and where you're comfortable running your own viewings. For a home that needs real selling — negotiation, chain management, hand-holding a nervous buyer through — a good local agent who only gets paid when you complete usually earns their commission. Judge on the model and the incentive, not just the headline fee.

How to vet any agent — on the portals or off

Whichever way you lean, judge an agent on substance, not slogans. A few checks that consistently separate the good from the mediocre:

• Look at their actual live listings. Are the photos bright and professional? Are the descriptions accurate and detailed, or lazy? This is exactly how your home will be presented.
• Check their sold record on your streets. An agent who regularly sells homes like yours, nearby, knows your local buyers. Zoopla's sold-price data is useful here.
• Ask about redress and standards. Every UK agent must belong to a government-approved redress scheme (The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme). Membership of a professional body such as Propertymark is a further reassurance. If an agent is vague about this, walk away.
• Get the fee and the tie-in in writing. Know the commission, the length of the sole-agency period, and any withdrawal fees before you sign.
• Pin down the marketing plan. Which portals, when, and what photography and floorplan are included. "It'll go online" is not an answer.

If jargon like "sole agency", "multi-agency" or "Only With Us" is tripping you up, our property jargon explained guide translates the lot into plain English.

If your real goal is speed or privacy, not top price

Plenty of people who search for "agents not on Rightmove" aren't really chasing a secret agent at all. They want out — quietly, quickly, without a stream of strangers walking through the house or a board announcing their circumstances to the neighbours. If that's you, be honest about it, because a different route serves you far better than a hard-to-find agent.

A reputable cash buyer or specialist quick-sale company sells your home with zero public advertising, no viewings circus, and a completion timescale usually inside 7 to 28 days. The trade-off is price. Genuine cash buyers typically pay somewhere in the region of 75–85% of full market value, and you should treat any offer above about 82% with healthy scepticism until it's confirmed in writing. That discount buys you speed, certainty and privacy. For some situations — probate, divorce, relocation, or halting a repossession — that trade is well worth it. For others it isn't. Only you can judge, but you should judge it with eyes open.

Two safeguards before you go down that road. First, check the buyer belongs to the National Association of Property Buyers (NAPB) and is registered with The Property Ombudsman (TPO) — that gives you a complaints route if things go wrong. Second, never pay upfront fees to a "cash buyer", and be wary of any firm that drops its offer at the last minute once you're committed. Our guide on how to sell your house fast covers the process and the red flags in detail, and you can sense-check the wider market in our industry data.

Frequently asked questions

Why are some estate agents not on Rightmove?

Usually cost. Rightmove can charge an independent branch £1,500–£2,000 a month, so some small agents drop it and rely on Zoopla, OnTheMarket, their own site and local reputation. Others list exclusively on OnTheMarket under its "Only With Us" model. It rarely signals a better agent — and it does reduce how many buyers see your home.

Is it better to use an agent who's on Rightmove and Zoopla?

For most sellers chasing the best price, yes. Those portals — Rightmove especially — carry the vast majority of active UK buyers. Listing off them narrows your audience and tends to slow the sale and soften the final price. The exceptions are genuine privacy sales and situations where speed matters more than money.

What is an "off-market" or "quiet" sale?

It's selling without public advertising — the agent markets your home directly to a select list of buyers instead of putting it on the portals. It suits high-value homes, privacy-conscious sellers, and quick discreet sales. It's a legitimate but niche approach, and it usually favours discretion over maximum price.

Can I sell my house without any estate agent at all?

Yes. You can sell privately, through a property auction, or directly to a cash-buying company. Private sale saves on commission but puts the marketing, viewings and negotiation on you. Auctions and cash buyers offer speed and certainty, usually at some cost to price. The right choice depends on whether your priority is the highest figure or the fastest, simplest exit.

Does OnTheMarket have homes I won't find on Rightmove?

Sometimes, yes. Under its "Only With Us" rules, agents can list a property on OnTheMarket exclusively, or a day or more before it appears elsewhere. If you're a buyer, it's worth searching OnTheMarket as well as Rightmove so you don't miss anything. If you're a seller, remember that early exclusivity on a smaller portal also means fewer eyes at launch.

The bottom line

Finding estate agents who aren't on Rightmove or Zoopla is easy enough — walk your high street, search OnTheMarket, ask recent movers, and check community pages. The harder and more important question is whether you should. For the average seller, the big portals are where the buyers, the competition and ultimately the best price live, and opting out of that reach usually costs you far more than it saves. Off-market selling is a real tool, but a specialist one, best suited to privacy, unusual homes, or a fast and discreet exit.

If you're weighing your options, get an honest valuation, judge agents on their marketing and local track record rather than which portals they've dropped, and — if what you actually want is speed and certainty — look at a reputable cash sale rather than a hard-to-find agent. Ready Steady Sell, founded by Lisa Hayes, exists to help UK homeowners make that call clearly, whichever route turns out to be right for you. Compare the fast-sale options in our guide to the best house-buying companies, and start with a realistic sense of what your home is worth using our valuation guide.