Countrywide furloughs mortgage brokers and warns other staff to be ready

Countrywide’s 10,000 employees have been told via email today that they face being furloughed as the Coronavirus lock-down continues to kill the property market. The Negotiator has been told that the email prepares staff for the eventuality and that employees at the company’s financial services division, which has been particularly impacted by the property market hard stop, have already been furloughed. While some sales and lettings activity is continuing, the work of mortgage brokers has been doubly difficult to sustain – home buyers are understandably reluctant to take on new debt or remortgage at the moment, while lenders have been withdrawing products and asking for ever larger LTV ratios. Countrywide’s decision is thought to be linked to the government’s announcement earlier this week that all sales and lettings home moves should not proceed unless they were already past exchange and contractually unable to stop. Work remotely Countrywide had already sent all of its employees home to work remotely and closed branches as per government advice which, now that the Coronavirus Bill has passed, is backed up by police powers to shut business premises that are not on the exempted list. The decision by Countrywide to consider furloughing its staff is…

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