Savills
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Latest property news
Countrywide lettings chief jumps ship to Nick Dunning Associates
South African Tim Van der Schyff has left Countrywide's premium John D Wood business to head up the lettings portfolio of Nick Dunning Associates.
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Latest property news
Yopa gets ANOTHER £20 million to fund its expansion
Savills has injected another tranche of cash into hybrid estate agency Yopa alongside several other investors, taking the total invested in the firm to £75 million. News emerged over the Bank Holiday weekend that Savills was one of four shareholders to raise a further £20 million for the company on top of previous cash calls. This latest round includes Savills’ subsidiary Grosvenor House and the Daily Mail’s parent company DMGT. “We’ve closely followed the dynamics of the property market and believe that technology-driven consumer demand will move estate agency transactions from the high street to online hybrids such as Yopa,” says Manuel Lopo De Carvalho, CEO of dmg ventures. Yopa says the new cash will be used to recruit more local representatives, upgrade its tech and fund a new customer services operation in Watford. The total raised so far includes £16 million in 2016 just a few months after it launched, while last May it raised £15 million in a similar cash-call on investors plus a further £27.6 million in September. Market share This means the business has now completed all the traditional funding rounds that start-ups usually attain, and it’s likely that investors will be expecting Yopa to start grabbing…
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So that’s where Marsh & Parson star Liza-Jane Kelly went!
Senior industry veteran Liza-Jane Kelly has joined Savills to head up the company’s prime London market sales team just over a year after her shock departure from London agency Marsh & Parsons. She helped grow M&P from a minor operator to one of the capital’s fastest-expanding agents, enlarging it from seven to 27 branches. Kelly led a management buyout of M&P in 2005 with fellow director Peter Rollings, backed by Irish firm Sherry Fitzgerald, growing the company partly through the acquisition of local competitor Vanstons in 2006. But after LSL bought the company in 2011, Kelly unexpectedly left the company to “pursue other career opportunities” in May last year. Before joining M&P she had worked initially for Sherry Fitzgerald in Ireland before moving to London to work for Hamptons International. Kelly has been biding her time, waiting for the ideal opportunity to present itself, and her new role at Savills is one of the most prestigious and challenging within the estate agent industry. “I’m delighted to be joining the team at Savills, a company and brand I have long admired,” she says. Savills reveals she will be working with and evolving existing teams and concentrating on London’s core prime markets…
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Chestertons promotes Guy Gittins to MD as group CEO steps down
Upmarket agency Chestertons has revealed a reshuffle at the top after Group CEO Allan Collins stepped down today, 15 months after his appointment, while former Head of Residential Sales Guy Gittins has been promoted to become the UK’s Managing Director. Collins is to become Group Deputy Chairman after being appointed CEO in March last year, replacing Robert Bartlett, following five years spent as Group Chief Financial Officer, and prior to that stints at Savills and cruise firm P&O. One of his last decisions was to return Chestertons’ 32 branches to Zoopla after a three year hiatus during which it listed only with OTM and Rightmove. Guy’s rapid rise Guy Gittins is one of the property industry’s high fliers and his promotion to the top job in the UK after seven years at Chestertons is not a surprise to many who know him. Gittins made his name both within the industry and beyond after working for Savills on the successful launch of the world famous Candy & Candy development One Hyde Park from 2010 onwards, before joining Chestertons in 2012. Before that he worked for cigar-chomping hotelier and developer Peter de Savary. “During the seven years I have worked for Chestertons…
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Savills senior team cash in share options worth £4.5m
Read how senior managers and directors have this year cashed in shares worth just under £4.5 million from the company's two annual bonus schemes.
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Rampant growth of build-to-rent sector revealed by British Property Federation
Homes built grew by 30% over the past 12 months, will reach 200,000 by 2020 and has the backing of the government and planners.
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Gender pay gap: Savills says women are paid 37% less than men within its UK operation
Savills has become the first UK estate agent to break cover and publish its gender pay gap data under the government’s new reporting requirements. From this year, any organisation with more than 250 employees is required by law to report and publish their gender pay gap data by 5th April each year. Excluding its City trading arm, the median gender pay gap at Savills is currently 37% while the median bonus gap is 69%. And more men than women receive bonuses in the UK – 88% of male employees compared to 80% of female ones. This, CEO Mark Ridley (pictured, left) says, is largely down to the industry’s track record, which has “historically attracted fewer women than men, with the result that there are now more men than women at a senior level”. “Addressing this imbalance is a key focus for Savills UK and we believe that we have made significant progress over the last few years to improve diversity in our business.” One key achievement for the company is its ‘return to work coaching programme’ which has seen the ratio of women returning to Savills after maternity leave increase from 10% to 95% since 2015. Mark also says its…
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People are moving home half as often during their lives than ten years ago, claims Savills
The financial crisis of 2008 still casts a long shadow over the UK property market and that includes a halving in the number of times people move home during their lives, research by Savills has highlighted. Its examination of home moves reveals that the average has dropped from 3.6 times to 1.8 times per family since the crash, a figure that stubbornly refuses to budge. In comments made to the BBC this morning, Savills’ Head of Research Lucian Cook suggests that unless people are enabled to move house more often, there is little point helping first time buyers on to the first rung of the property ladder. The areas where people are moving the most are in Wandsworth, Basingstoke and Deane, Norwich, Rushmoor, Lambeth, Corby, Swindon, Aylesbury Vale, South Norfolk and Bracknell Forest. The destinations where people are staying put the most include Pembrokeshire, Harrow, Ceredigion, Blaenau Gwent, Brent, Wolverhampton, Isle of Anglesey, Sefton, Newham and Redbridge. “Those not trading up are the forgotten people of the housing market,” Lucian Cook told the BBC. Savills categorises housing markets in the UK into three types. These are areas where house prices are stagnant and don’t produce the equity gains people need…
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Savills says YOPA is now 10th largest estate agent in UK – but by what measure?
Savills has claimed that YOPA, the hybrid estate agency it invested in last year, is now a top ten UK agency. The claim was made yesterday within its preliminary full-year results for 2017 in which it also said its multi-million pound investment into the agency was its largest to date within the tech sector. Savills claimed that YOPA has grown during the past 12 months to become the 10th largest estate agent in the UK, although it didn’t reveal how this was measured. After a long exchange between Savills and The Negotiator, we can reveal that last year Savills believes YOPA was the 10th largest estate agent by new listings, rather than existing listings, branches or employees. Savills has achieved the ‘top ten’ status for YOPA by comparing brands rather than groupings of estate agents such as Countrywide or LSL, whose combined new instructions from all their brands are likely to be considerably higher than YOPA’s. YOPA, which has approximately 100 local agents, also has some way to go before it can claim to be the largest agent by existing listings on Rightmove. It has 3,000 while Savills has over 6,000 and Purplebricks currently lists over 16,000. Newspapers’ cash In…
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Savills invests in two tech start-ups as it reveals bumper 2017
Savills has reported a bumper 2017 including a 7% jump in profits at its UK residential operation to £18.7 million, in stark contrast to many of its competitors including Foxtons. Group revenue, which includes both its residential and commercial property activities, increased by 11% to £1.6 billion on which it made a profit of £140 million last year, up 3.5% on 2016. Outgoing Group Chief Executive Jeremy Helsby (pictured, left) says a “resilient” performance by the UK residential team was “key to this result”. This business grew its turnover by 4% to £128.9 million, helped by more high-value property transactions in both UK resales and new homes and an increase in fees charged, all of which helped offset 3% fewer sales overall in the UK. Savills also says it sold 4% more properties within its ‘core’ London market, driven by plummeting prices in the capital which have helped re-start activity. Proptech The company has also revealed its latest proptech investments via its Grosvenor Hill Venture outfit, which it used to invest in online agency YOPA in June 2016. Savills claims YOPA is now the 10th largest agent in the UK, although it doesn’t reveal by what yardstick. The latest tech…
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