Bankers, scientists and engineers are Britain’s surprise lunchtime property addicts

Scientists, bankers and engineers may seem an unlikely grouping of people, but each working day they unite in the same online behaviour.

Rightmove’s website traffic sees a major jump in activity every weekday-lunchtime, and the three industries holding the highest proportions of lunchtime property addicts have been revealed to be banking & finance, science & pharmaceuticals and engineering & manufacturing.

The spike in Rightmove website traffic every weekday lunchtime is such a workplace institution that it forms the inspiration for the company’s latest TV advert. The advert launched last week and follows the familiar journey of a young lady ‘dreaming’ about her next home move on Rightmove while on her lunch break at work.

Rightmove director Miles Shipside comments:

“While some home moves are carefully planned from the outset, many have more impulsive origins. Serial property dreamers browsing Rightmove can easily be seduced by the property of their dreams and turn the dream into reality. Appropriately the soundtrack that accompanies Rightmove’s new TV advert is Blondie’s hit ‘Dreaming’.”

Rightmove researched the lunchtime trend with a survey of just under 3,000 employees who indicated that they used Rightmove at work. More than 60% of those in science & pharmaceuticals, banking & finance and engineering & manufacturing were found to use Rightmove during their lunchbreak. The most distracted Rightmove users, where more than half admitted to property browsing ‘when I feel like it’ at work, were found in hospitality & tourism. Meanwhile, Britain’s most disciplined workplace home-hunters are in education & teaching and health & social care, which had the highest proportion of employees who browsed Rightmove at the end of the working day.

Shipside adds:


“The professions found to be holding the largest proportion of lunchtime Rightmove ‘dreamers’ were slightly surprising. Although Blondie remind us in the advert that ‘dreaming is free’, it may be that our scientist, banking and engineer users are more likely to have the financial means to move and are therefore are keener to give up their lunchbreaks to see what’s on the market.”