Countrywide
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Latest property news
Countrywide to refashion hybrid offering and beef up lettings
Countrywide’s plan to turn its business around has been revealed, including the company’s intention to relaunch its hybrid online offering. As part of its ‘back to basics’ plan, the company also says it intends to begin recruiting again at a local level and wants to revive its lettings business. “We are focused on restoring lettings capability back at regional, area and branch level and in our customer service centres,” the company says. “We believe that continued growth in the rentals market provides huge opportunity for operators who deliver the highest levels of compliance and service to landlords and tenants.” Other changes include plans to decentralise its operations, give branches more information to help them measure their performance against local competitors and relaunch its ‘hybrid’ online offering. Online players “Previous management believed that it too should offer a digital fixed fee proposition in order to compete with the online players,” the company says. “The resulting hybrid digital fee proposition, however, led to confusion for our customers who expected to receive a full service at a reduced fee.” The other key new focus for Countrywide will be to restore its revenue pipeline of ancillary income from services such as conveyancing and mortgages,…
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Latest property news
Revealed: why Countrywide sales and lettings went awry during Platt years
Countrywide has revealed that it will take three years to turn the business around following the departure of Alison Platt in January, and also detailed how and why she left. During the final months of last year Countrywide Executive Chairman Peter Long carried out a review of why its sales and lettings business had lost so much market share and profitability since 2015. He discovered that the strategy adopted by the company to treat sales and lettings as a single retail business failed to appreciate that they are really separate entities each with different characteristics and customer bases requiring separate expertise. Long also found that the ‘one size fits all’ approach the company had adopted led to a reduction in entrepreneurial culture and that branch managers lost the autonomy to recruit and promote colleagues or develop their businesses to fit local conditions. Reducing closure costs Countrywide has also published how much its ongoing cost reduction and closures programme cost last year. Its preliminary results, which come ahead of its full Annual Report later this month, show that it spent £4.4 million on redundancies and changing the leadership structure and £1.65 million on consultants to manage costs and get “strategic initiatives”…
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Movers & Shakers
Former Countrywide agent heads new home staging division
Former Countrywide estate agent, Marina Collett who spent 21 years at John D Wood & Co, has moved into the property staging business, to help dress luxury properties for sale or let in London and the home counties.
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Latest property news
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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Latest property news
Ewemove poach senior Countrywide branch manager to lead its franchisee support team
Hybrid agency Ewemove has poached a senior member of the Countrywide team to help its existing network of franchisees grow their businesses, and also recruit more businesses to the brand. Chris Webb (pictured, right), who until last month was a Senior Branch Manager at Countrywide and before that worked at Winkworth, has a 14-year track record in the industry starting out as a negotiator at a Winchester independent aged just 18. Now 32 years old, he will hold the title of Performance Director at Ewemove and report to Head Shepherd Nick Neill (pictured, below). “What especially drew me to the brand was its effectiveness in bringing together the very best aspects of traditional and online estate agency,” says Chris. “Having come from a very traditional background, I’m looking forward to further establishing EweMove as a serious alternative, and the go-to estate agency.” Ewemove, which is part of the Property Franchise Group, is unusual within the industry because, although it originally launched as an online agent, the company is keen to position itself as a ‘high street but hybrid’ operator and in January revealed it had six high street offices. “With our unrivalled commitment to customer care and our use of…
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Latest property news
Property PLC share prices tumble as global stock markets stumble
The global collapse in share prices has hit the main property market PLCs this morning, except for Hunters. LSL Property Services, which owns Reeds Rains, Marsh & Parsons and Your Move, has been hit the hardest. Its shares had dropped by 7.55% by lunchtime today while almost all the others saw their share price cut too. Countrywide’s already much-reduced share price dropped by 5.1% and Belvoir by 3.8% while all the other saw reductions of approximately 2% including ZPG, Rightmove, Savills, Purplebricks and the Property Franchise Group. These share price drops reflect the wider global collapse in confidence among investors, and although the FTSE 100 Index has been drifting downwards over the past five days, the biggest drop took place this morning when it saw a 3.5% drop at the opening of trading, mirroring similar drops in France, Germany and other European markets. The drops in Europe follow worse falls in Japan and the US, where their key stock market indicators fell by 4.7% and 4.6% respectively. These drops were in turn triggered by improved trading conditions in the US, which led to speculation about potential higher inflation and therefore interest rates across the globe. But the global share price…
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Latest property news
Countrywide CEO Alison Platt quits after sales and lettings ‘lose focus’
It’s official – after several days of speculation, Countrywide CEO Alison Platt has resigned from the company and will stand down from the board. Until a successor is found Executive Chairman Peter Long is to run the company. He is believed to have been instrumental in challenging the company’s strategic direction of recent, and a key figure in persuading Alison Platt to go. Clearly talking to the City, Peter says that although some parts of the company have been performing well, its core sales and lettings business has “lost focus” and that “a key priority will be to implement changes that will enable this area to start delivering once again,”. Profitable growth “Working together with this experienced executive team I feel confident we can return the business to profitable growth. “We have a strong and successful business in Financial Services, B2B and Commercial led by an experienced and committed management team.” There is speculation that Paul Creffield (pictured, left), who has been Managing Director of its Commercial Development team and joined the company in 2006, may be in the running to be the next CEO. During his time at Countrywide he has led most of its divisions and before joining…
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Latest property news
Is Alison Platt about to exit from Countrywide as share price dips under £1?
Rumours that the position of Countrywide CEO Alison Platt may be in jeopardy were circulating in the City after its share price hit a new all-time low of £0.98p during mid-day trading today. Shares in the company have been in freefall since a trading statement on Thursday warned that profits were likely to be lower than expected following a “disappointing” last quarter. That day its share price dropped 20% but has since fallen overall by a quarter as investor confidence in Countrywide crumbled after the trading update predicted its 2017 profits would be £65m, down by 22% from £83.5m during 2016, Last night Sky News reported that board members were in private discussions about the future of Alison Platt, who could be pushed out within days, and even if she does hang on, may struggle to survive until the full year results are published on the 8th March. These are likely to make grim reading, as the trading update suggested last week, and may push the company’s share price down past £1. If this were to happen then it would mark an extraordinary collapse. Countrywide’s share price has fallen from nearly £6 a share in September 2015 to £1.02 today…
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Latest property news
ZPG signs up four more big agency brands to multi-year deals, including YOPA
Zoopla parent company ZPG has revealed its latest set of multi-year tie-in agreements with agents including its first with a hybrid operator. ZPG says it has signed ‘long term’ agreements with the agents, which are likely to be similar to ZPG’s recent deals with the larger agency networks and last up to five years. The named companies involved are all South of England and London agents; Foxtons, Dexters and Andrews plus online agency YOPA. The agreements usually offer agents more stable pricing structures in return for committing to advertise all their properties on ZPG’s two main portals, Zoopla and PrimeLocation. Although ZPG won’t reveal the nature of each agreement, they are either simple no-frills listing deals or include elements of services provided by ZPG’s business-to-business brands such as the Property Software Group and Hometrack. 200 branches The latest deals will keep 200 branches within ZPG including the 70 apiece that Foxtons and Dexters each operate, and Andrews’ 60 offices. Yopa doesn’t have any branches but like Purplebricks has local agents who work from home. These number 102 currently, spread across nine regional teams. “We’re delighted to extend our relationships with each of these firms for the long term,” says Mark…
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Latest property news
Landlord exodus revealed as stock of London rental properties drops by 21%
The stock of rental properties within the private sector dropped last year by 4% across the UK and by 21% in London, helping push the average rent for a property to £960 a month, and without London to £768, it has been revealed. The East of England also saw a double digit (-15%) reduction in the number of rental homes. Five other areas also witnessed a shrinking stock of rental properties includes Scotland, the SW, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands and the NW. But stocks in four rental markets are still expanding including Wales (+13%), the West Midlands (+12%) the NE (+6%) and the SE (+5%). Countrywide’s monthly rental index reveals that the ratio of homes bought by landlords during 2017 as a percentage of the total market dropped to 12.5%, a nine year low, and lower than during 2016 (14.7%) and 2015 (16.3%). Increasing rents This reduction in the stock of privately rented homes, set against a trend of increasing numbers of tenants, is helping push up rents, Countrywide says. Rental increases have jumped by a third from 1.8% in 2016 to 2.4% during 2017. The figures also reveal that forty-six per cent of landlords increased the rent…
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