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Latest property news
Senior Countrywide figure Ian McKenzie to head up Guild
Senior industry figure Ian McKenzie (pictured, right) has left Countrywide after five and a half years as its South Central Retail Director to take up the position of CEO at The Guild of Property Professionals. McKenzie replaces Marcus Whewell, who for the past nine years has steered the organisation and has been promoted to Chief Financial Officer of parent company GPEA. “I have worked for The Guild for the past nine years and have seen it grow and develop into a network of nearly 800 Members. I am very proud of this achievement,” says Marcus. GPEA includes agent Fine & Country, media services company PropertyLogic and online-only agent PropertyPlatform as well as the guild. McKenzie has worked in the industry for 30 years including running three West Country branches for Hambro Countrywide during the 1990s, then as an area manager for Halifax Property Services plus running his own property and financial services business. He later went on to be managing director of franchise-based agency Enfields in Hampshire before joining Countrywide in 2011. “I am delighted to be working closely with The Guild again, to support and enhance the excellent relationships we have with our members and expand the network further,”…
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Stamp Duty surcharge hitting landlords hard, says Countrywide
The government’s assault on the buy-to-let market is having the desired effect on landlords, latest research from Countrywide reveals. It has revealed that since the additional three percent Stamp Duty was introduced in April last year 56 per cent of all purchases the company handled where a landlord and first time buyer competed for a property, the first time buyer won. Johnny Morris, research director at Countrywide (pictured, lefgt), said: “Given their inability to spread the higher rate over a longer period, these micro developers have been the buyers hit hardest by the higher rates. Across the country as a whole, their numbers are running at around half the levels they were.” Countrywide undertook the research between April and December last year and says some 9,000 fewer people buying their first home lost out to landlords than during the same period last year. The shift in activity within the market is down to fewer landlords being prepared to commit to a purchase once a bidding war over a property starts as a raft of measures, including extra Stamp Duty, have dampened landlord enthusiasm for purchasing more properties. This includes a severe reduction in the amount of mortgage interest relief they…
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Developers launch new type of home, the uberhaus
When is a two-storey flat a house, and when is it a duplex? Developers L&Q and Countryside have decided to blur the lines at a development currently under construction in West London with a new concept called an uberhaus, which translates roughly as ‘wonderful home’ in German. The glossy brochure for the site heralds a new type of living, but what will agents think of the concept when it comes to selling these apartments? The 52-acre and £600m Acton Gardens is new small town being built within W3 which will eventually include some 2,500 homes including a school, three parks, a central plaza and hub, a school as well as half a dozen apartment blocks containing townhouses and two and three bedroom apartments. And then there are the uberhaus apartments. Or are they houses. The joint developers have decided to join the two together by creating a hybrid and, in the process it is claimed, launched a new home concept. The three and four bedroom uberhouses are within an apartment block but, like a house, have all the living rooms including the kitchen downstairs on the ground floor including a patio garden, while all the bedrooms are upstairs. “We set out to…
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In a nutshell: the property share price freefall
If the share price of the UK’s residential stockmarket-listed corporates are the bellwether of the industry’s future health then estate agents should be battening down the hatches. Investors in London’s stock exchange clearly think Brexit, the recent Stamp Duty increases and last week’s letting fees ban are going to make selling or renting homes harder and less profitable in the coming months. Share prices have dropped alarmingly. Compared to a year ago when Brexit was still only a possibility, Countrywide’s share price is down by 52%, Foxtons by 37%, LSL Property Services by 33%, Belvoir Lettings by 15.7% and Savills by 13.9%. Even the industry’s digital superstars, so beloved of the City in recent years, have taken substantial hits including Purplebricks (-31%) and Rightmove (-11%) although Zoopla, whose model has helped its share price grow since August, is only down by half a percent as is Belvoir Lettings. Savills has also done better during the recent bloodbath which UBS analyst Heidi Richardson says is because the stockmarket knows only 9% of its sales come from selling homes in the UK. Purplebricks survived the lettings fees ban much better than its more traditional competitors after rushing out a statement that the…
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Countrywide to roll out pilot hybrid offering
Countrywide has revealed this morning that its trial fixed-fee, boiled down hybrid sales service has been a success and that it is ‘delighted’ by the results and will now roll it out nationally. Within its Q3 trading statement released today the company says the pilot hybrid branches recorded ‘consistent outperformance’ compared to a control group of traditional branches since the digital pilot, as it known internally, launched in June. The agencies involved were Spencers in Leicestershire and Rutland; Austin & Wyatt in Dorset (pictured, right), Hampshire and Wiltshire; and Frank Innes in the East Midlands. At the time Countrywide CEO Alison Platt (pictured) said there was ‘no going back’ from digital, which the company has described as a “leap forward” for the industry. Compared to the control group the hybrid branches gained 4% more leads, 15% more instructions and 8% more registered buyers. “What we have learned over the past few months has informed the development of the proposition going forward,” the company says. “The combination of our people, our high-street presence and online technology is clearly differentiating. It is evident that our full-service customers value the enhanced online tools that this proposition brings. We are now rolling out our digital…
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Who are the best paid CEOs in property?
In April this year it was revealed that Foxtons CEO Nic Budden had been awarded a 19% pay rise which is likely to boost his salary to £2.3 million for 2016, up from his 2015 salary of £856,000, making him one of the best paid CEOs in property. He is one of an elite group of business leaders in our industry who earn six and seven figure total pay packages and lead companies with thousands of employees from multi-agency group to the big portals. But except for Alison Platt of Countrywide and Alex Chesterman of Zoopla, this high-flying club of top executives is a largely anonymous and invisible bunch who rarely venture out into the public eye, and whose performances are rarely examined or discussed despite being responsible for the livelihoods of many thousands of property professionals. So how do they measure up – are their public limited companies doing well? 1. CEO: Mark Allan (until June), £2.4m Company: Unite Sector: Student accommodation Revenue: +10% Share price: -12% Profit: +260% 2. CEO: Nick McKittrick, £2.3m Company: Rightmove Sector: Portals Revenue: +25% Share price: +83% Underlying profit: +16% 3. CEO: Jeremy Helsby, £2.29m Company: Savills Sector: Sales and lettings…
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What will Countrywide announce next Thursday?
Countrywide has said this morning that it is going to make its third quarter management statement next Thursday, and there is now nervous debate among employees and shareholders about what Alison Platt and her executive team are going to reveal. The company has been through turbulent times over the past 18 months as its share price has dropped by two thirds from over £6 a share to £2 today. Several senior people have exited the business recently including, most notably, the managing director of its estate agency business Bob Scarff. Platt (pictured) has a difficult job ahead of her. The number of homes for sale in the UK have been dropping and many of Countrywide’s competitors have been suffering this year including Foxtons, which said it had seen sales in London reduce by a third in recent months. There are two rumoured directions in which Platt is planning to travel. The first is to reduce costs, which will reassure investors who traditionally bay for cuts in difficult times. Several major Countrywide brands have indicated they expect to drastically reduce their print advertising spend next year. But Platt is also said to be considering how to streamline the business which now numbers some…
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No spare change for rented spare rooms?
The number of tenants in the UK renting a property with a spare room has nearly halved from 60% in 2010 to just 35% today, the lowest proportion on record according to Countrywide’s latest monthly lettings index. Also, the extra cost of renting a property with a spare room is now £295 a month, an increase of 14% over the past five years. “As affordability pressures have risen, for many tenants, extra space has become a luxury,” says its Head of Research Johnny Morris (pictured). “Sacrificing extra bedrooms and sharing has helped renters to absorb higher prices. But those living in the South are close to a point where there’s not much more room to squeeze, meaning rental growth is likely to be capped by tenants’ incomes for some time.” The squeeze on affordability in most British cities is also revealed by the research, which says that on average only a quarter of tenants in many urban areas of the south have a spare room including Bristol (24%), Oxford (28%) and Cambridge (27%). Those tenants living further north are more able to rent a spare room, the research shows, and for example in Liverpool the figure is nearly double at…
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Movers & Shakers
New MD for Hamptons International
Countrywide plc has appointed Nick Hughes as Managing Director for Hamptons International.
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Latest property news
Brexit result worries the stock market
Housebuilders, banks and property agencies slip and slide as confusion reigns.
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