Agencies & People
News covering the businesses, activities, people and personalities in estate agency and letting agency and wider residential property industry.
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Calling Minister: auction Local Authority plots!
Rory Daly, CEO, SDL Auctions, is pleased that the Housing Secretary is examining all potential development land in public ownership...
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Emson’s strong start to 2018
Clive Emson Auctioneers sold land and property worth £17 million at its February sale, with an 85 per cent sale rate after cataloguing 133 lots.
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John D Wood scrapes in to help Londoners survive the Beast from the East
Few agents will have considered making promotional capital from the week’s Beast from the East storm, but London agency John D Wood has, and should get this year’s award for quick thinking. The company’s branch in the SW London suburb of Wandsworth yesterday morning decided to hand out ice scrapers to cars parked on streets within its patch, garnering praise from locals on social media. Branch employees were up at 7.30am distributing the scrapers, which came with a note saying: “Please find your complimentary ice scraper on your bonnet this morning. “We wanted to reach out to our closest neighbours and leave you a small token to hopefully come to your aid on this very cold morning!”. Beast from the east Branch manager James Wright (pictured, below) and a colleague spent an hour or so placing the unusual ‘direct mail’ onto the windscreens of 250 cars on six streets around its branch in central Wandsworth. “We do the usual door drops and occasionally we distribute local market insight reports as flyers at the train station, but this is first time we’ve done this,” he says. “To be honest, we’d had the ice scrapers sitting around gathering dust for some time…
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Hybrid estate agent who works from home takes over high street competitor
A glimpse of the industry’s future has been revealed after a Staffordshire estate agent who works from home with his two sons today announced he has bought a high street competitor. Chris Walthall (pictured, above), who set up a Ewemove franchise covering Leek and Hanley in Staffordshire four years ago, runs it with his son and fellow director Dan as well as another son, Conor. “I’ve operated the business from my home since 2014 and have a dedicated office space where I can have clients round and focus on my day-to-day work,” he says. The trio’s business, which Ewemove gathers together with other franchisees to create ‘Ewemove Staffordshire’ on Rightmove, offers both a sales and lettings service and, Ewemove claims, is now one of its most successful branches. Chris, like an increasing number of franchisees across the industry, had no experience of sales or lettings before acquiring the franchise, having previously been a salesperson in other sectors. But, although his family’s business is based from home, Chris has now bought a high street branch in Biddulph, to the north of Hanley, previously operated by a franchisee from Ewemove’s parent company Martin & Co (pictured, above). Its former owners will be…
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Four Belvoir letting agents hoover up 1,350 properties in £2m deal
Many larger lettings agents have been buying up the portfolios of smaller localised rivals in recent months as the private rental sector has become tougher, and the latest to report such a move is Belvoir. Four of its franchisee have now completed portfolio acquisitions with collective revenues of £2 million a year, adding 1,335 properties to its property management tally in Hitchin/Welwyn Garden City/St Albans, Derby West, Hendon and Corby. But the largest of the portfolio purchases has been completed by its Hitchin/Welwyn Garden City franchisee. The deal includes 624 managed rental properties in Welwyn Garden City and St Albans with a total revenue of £1 million a year, adding fees revenues to Belvoir’s head office of £400,00 over the next six years. This deal was funded by the local Belvoir franchisees own sources of finance, and is both a portfolio and territorial expansion for it, helping the franchisee break into the lucrative St Albans rental market. The other three portfolio acquisitions add another £1 million a year the franchisees revenues, helped by a £193,000 cash injection by the Belvoir head office. Belvoir UK’s keenness to help franchisees hoover up portfolios with its ‘Assisted Acquisitions’ programme is clear from the financials.;…
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Connells results: group grabs 6% more market share as it cashes in ZPG shares worth £38.5m
They say the strongest thrive in difficult markets, and Connells 600 branch network claims to be doing just that, helped by a £38.5m windfall from the sale of its ZPG shares. Parent company Connells Group revealed this morning that it increased market share by 6% last year and now claims to have the largest book of properties for sale in the UK, despite being half the size of rival Countrywide. On the back of this, its pre-tax profits for 2017 increased by 42% to £104.2m from £73.4m, its latest results show. The group also says it has bucked the market and while nationally there has been a 14.7% decline in transactions compared to 2016 – according to the latest Land Registry figures – Connells Group experience only minor slippage. Sales instructions were down by 2%, sales by 3% and exchanges by 4%. The company sells approximately 70,000 properties a year and manages 45,000 lettings with 7,000 staff. Its mortgage division helped too, where income increased by 13%, while lettings income increased by 9% but profits shot up by a third. Land and new homes and conveyancing performed strongly too, as did its survey division where profits increased by 5.4%. “Our…
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Countrywide break-up now a possibility, claims former chairman
Former Countrywide chairman Harry Hill has said that he believes an aggressive break-up of the company could now “be a possibility”. The comments came as he hit out at the Alison Platt years, suggesting that the company’s habit of replacing “seasoned professionals” with retail-background management was a mistake. Harry (pictured, left) is also critical of the current non-exec chairman of Countrywide for his lack of property experience. This is Peter Long, who gained much of his track record in the travel industry and who has stepped in to run the company until a replacement is found for Platt. “City reaction has been very muted and most people close to the company appear to think that recruiting a high calibre person will be difficult, and any recovery process will probably [also] be slow and difficult,” he told website Dealmakerz. Although the Countrywide share price has bombed since the New Year falling from £1.35 a share in January to a low of £0.78p earlier this month, its share price has begun a mild recovery. Crunch time? Following early morning trading today it now stands at £0.90p a share. But crunch time for Countrywide is likely to arrive on the 27th April when…
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You’re never gooner guess which football team most agents support!
Football has been a key part of the property industry for many decades and hundreds of agents around the UK support local teams from basic kit sponsorships to major financial support. This includes most recently Purplebricks founder Kenny Bruce, who put £500,000 of his newly-found wealth into a Northern Ireland club, Larne FC. But the clubs which agents support in their greatest numbers has often been a matter of conjecture – and sensitivity – given clients might not like their team of choice, until now. Reviews website allAgents has scanned the profiles of the 50,000 agents on its site and found that the largest group of supporters are Gooners. Premier league Arsenal fans make up a fifth of the property industry, allAgents claims, matching agents’ fondness of being underdogs. The club, remember have not won the Premier league for over a decade despite the more recent efforts of Arsene Wenger.] The next largest groups of supporters within in industry are Manchester (15%), Tottenham Hotspur (13%), Liverpool (11%) and Chelsea (10%). Agents also like to play football, as well as being supporters. Some 56% list it as their main sporting activity, although bowls is less popular – just half a percent…
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A record smashing 2017 for Clive Emson
Clive Emson Auctioneers also reports a record breaking 2017.
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OnTheMarket has been signing up 16 new agents a day since flotation
OnThemarket’s strategy to sign up more agents on the back of its recent AIM listing appear to be working. The formerly mutual portal has signed up 243 additional sales and letting agents to its service, up from the 81 revealed just after its shares were listed on AIM ten days ago. The portal also says independent agency group Chancellors has begun listing its properties on the portal. In November Chancellors agreed to sign a five-year listing deal, but only if OnTheMarket successfully achieved an AIM flotation. This means Chancellors’ 53 sales and lettings branches, which range across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Herefordshire London, Oxfordshire, Powys and Surrey are now listing their properties on both OnTheMarket, Zoopla and Rightmove. The portal says Chancellors’ listing is evidence that agent support for the portal, which is now valued at £101.4 million following the AIM launch, is growing. Chancellors has agreed to more than just a listing with OnTheMarket, though. The company has agreed to actively promote the OnTheMarket.com portal brand with digital and branch-based marketing activity. Chancellors Group Chancellors, which used to be known as Hogg Robinson Property Services, in 2016 generated profits of £2.5 million on a turnover of £26.6 million, its latest accounts…
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