Foxtons is planning to ‘get back on the front foot’ and boost revenue after the firm’s interim results yesterday revealed a 17% decline in sales and financial services despite a rise in profit and turnover.

Peter Rollings, (pictured) Foxton’s interim chief executive, told The Neg that sales had lagged behind, in part due to a lack of sales negotiators to push its current stock of circa 7,000 properties.

He says: “What we need to do is get back on to the front foot and start making a profit. Sales have lagged behind and we don’t have enough negotiators to sell the stock.

“Training negotiators takes nine to 12 months. We want to increase the salesforce by 10-15% from our current structure which numbers about 450.”

Although the agency suffered a 17% decline in sales and down 8% in financial services Rollings says the firm is expecting Q3 to be ‘a more normalised level of activity’.

“We’re a premium brand agency with premium prices,” he adds. “Where you have a premium fee we want to focus where the money is – selling property.

“Last June we banked £8.5m – more than double than we would normally and we have 45% more stock in the pipeline now.

BIGGER LOAN SIZES

“We have bigger loan sizes running through [our mortgage brokerage] Alexander Hall. What we are seeing there is repeat customers coming back and going up the loan ladder.

“What we need is more brokers and advisers – we get 3000 applications a week feeding in from the Foxtons machine.

“In terms of recruitment we are looking for all sorts but I’m a big fan of university leavers. They almost always have a positive outlook but recently we have also welcomed back a lot of Foxtons’ alumni.”