Industry blue-chip snaps up northern estate agency group
LRG has acquired the Northern Estate Agency Group which operates three key brands - Manning Stainton, Ryder & Dutton and Mortimers - nearly 50 years since the Manning property story began.
Industry blue-chip LRG has made one of its largest acquisitions after snapping up a leading northern estate agency firm with multiple brands.
Northern Estate Agencies Group now joins the LRG family including Manning Stainton, Ryder & Dutton and Mortimers, which collectively operate at 36 locations across West Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester.
LRG says this now makes the company a ‘true’ national estate agency with operations stretching from Wetherby in Yorkshire to the Isle of Wight, and all the businesses involved will continue to operate under their existing brand names, with all branches and the 400 staff retained
Leeds-based Northern Estate Agencies Group offers sales, lettings, financial services, conveyancing, auctions and new homes.
Long history
The Manning Stainton story began in 1976 when Russell Manning started up first first agency in central Leeds, expanded it into the suburbs and then sold it to William H Brown in 1987, joining the then Royal Insurance-owned agency as a regional director. He quit in 1990 and started up Manning & Company a year later and in 2000 acquired Stainton & Co to become Manning Stainton.
Manning Stainton, which bought Ryder Dutton and Mortimers in 2021, has many industry and Sunday Times awards to its name. Ryder Dutton is 106 years old and won three times recently at The Negotiator Awards and has many local and regional awards to its name. Mortimers, at 80 years old, operates across Lancashire and the Ribble Valley.
Mark Manning (main image, left), Group MD, will continue in his current role working with LRG to drive business growth, while also remaining a shareholder in the business. He will be supported by the retiring Russell Manning, who will remain as a consultant.
Long admired
“We are excited to enter this next phase of our growth working with LRG, a business we have long admired,” says Mark.
“Their commitment to local brands working alongside great people, together with the work they do within our communities, aligns with our own values.”
Matthew Light, Group Mergers & Acquisitions Director, LRG, says: “We are delighted to welcome Northern Estate Agencies Group into the LRG family. “This is one of our most significant acquisitions, alongside Chancellors, Acorn, Stirling Ackroyd, Gibbs Gillespie, scottfraser and Portico.
“Our strategy is to partner with both smaller and more established regional agencies, retain their local identities, grow them, and provide the support and scale of a national business.
“With several major acquisitions now completed and more opportunities in the pipeline for 2025 and 2026, this deal sets the tone for the next exciting phase of our growth.”
A great company with a strong customer service focus. Not quite national yet though as they have no presence in the South West peninsular of England.
LRG is proper estate agency growth run by estate agents who know what they are doing as opposed to companies like Connell, Fox, Your move yadda yadda who’s only focus is mortgages and how to bleed as much money as they can out of their customers. These type of corporate agent are as bad for the industry as the other type of agent, i.e the purplevricks, exps etc etc as these operate as one man bands with no infrastructure behind them so their only focus is to get instructions, doing so by offering cheap fees then doing nothing else after which means their after sales is causing real issues in the market. These type of agents do no sales chasing, instead leaving it to the proper estate agents in their chain or worse if you have 2 or more of this type of agent in a chain it is almost guaranteed to fall through. We have a very successful agency in the South West and although we only have 3 offices we have a million pound pipeline plus our rentals business. We can show that when a Exp type agent is involved in any of our chains it increases the fall through chance to over 50%.
Very pleased for LRG and may their success and growth continue.