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Agencies & People

Covid-hit estate agency emerges from pre-pack as lettings-only and hybrid

Andrew Grant is said to have been losing money for two years but has been tipped into administration by the Covid crisis.

Nigel Lewis

estate agency

Andrew Grant, the multi-branch and well-known West Midlands estate agency that last year said it was making a move away from the high street has now implemented some more radical surgery, blaming the pressures of the Covid lockdown.

The estate agency went into administration recently and, following a pre-pack agreement with administrators RSM, it has now been cleaved in two.

The company’s founder Andrew Grant, 75, has acquired the remaining sales instructions which will be completed. But its lettings operation has been acquired by a new management team including the brand name and 18 staff.

This is now being run by two former members of the Andrew Grant senior team – finance chief Joanna Munroe and senior partner George Pickard – plus Caroline Hope and Anneke Babber.

The new lettings-only venture is backed by two local business people, Peter Bloomer and Scott Richardson-Brown and will continue to operate along traditional lines but without a branch network.
Richardson-Brown told local media: “There is a huge need for personal service. We are going to do it with a different model and without a branch network.

“There is a viable business here. We will be using internet technology to drive the business.”

In September last year Andrew Grant managing partner Kristian Scott told The Negotiator it had closed its Redditch branch as part of a plan to shut most of its high street offices and move to a new model and allow its 100 staff to work from home.

But it later transpired that the company had been making ‘substantial losses’ for several years.

Now, neither of the operations involved in the pre-pack agreements need branches so its offices in Ludlow, Stourbridge, Kidderminster, Bromsgrove and Worcester are to close.

 

July 1, 2020

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