Savills
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket shares begin trading at £1.63p, plummets to £1.48p
Shares in OnTheMarket began trading on London’s AIM stock market today kicking off at £1.63p, valuing the company at £100 million, and quickly rising by 2p to £1.65 before dropping to £1.48p by end of trading on Friday. The OnThemarket shares issue, which it says has raised £30m out of a hoped-for £50m to finance its battle for market share with Rightmove and ZPG, is the conclusion of a long and tortuous road for CEO Ian Springett’s ambitious portal project. It launched in January 2015 two years after founding members Knight Frank, Savills, Strutt & Parker and Chestertons first convened to form parent company Agents’ Mutual Ltd. OnTheMarket.com positioned itself as a mutual organisation of agent members, but introduced a controversial ‘one other portal’ rules that made agents choose between either Rightmove or Zoopla as their ‘other portal’. Last year agent Gascoigne Halman took OnTheMarket to court, claiming the ‘one other portal’ rule was anti-competitive, but lost the case. This cleared the way for OnTheMarket to demutualise, which took place following a vote of its 2,700 agent members late last year. Former members of the mutual organisation were allocated share options based on their size of listing and length of…
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Movers & Shakers
New London appointment for Savills
Savills prime central London team has been bolstered by a new appointment as James Gilbert-Green joins a director in Savills Sloane Street office, from Strutt & Parker where he was a partner.
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Latest property news
Savills says its UK estate agency branches enjoyed strong finish to 2017 despite “uncertainty”
Savills says its UK residential arm helped grow its group revenue during 2017 “ahead of our previous expectations” as it prepares to publish its full-year results in March. The company’s statement to the stock exchange early this morning reveals that it experienced a stronger than expected finish to the year helped both by its resilient UK residential business but also its presence in several expanding commercial property markets overseas. These include Hong Kong, China, Australia, Japan, Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands, the company says. These countries performed better than Savills had expected and helped offset a wobble in the US office market which has been impacted by reduced government spending, and the recent cost of setting up Savills’ Capital Markets operation in New York. It is now part of its wider global property investment advice and brokerage team. Savills says it helped commercial clients buy and sell property assets worth €5.5 billion last year and launched several property funds. 2018 worries But the company’s now largely global business may be not so rosy next year. Savills says that “in the current year, against the backdrop of heightened uncertainty over global economic prospects, geopolitical risks and rising interest rates, we expect…
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Features
Was it all purple? Who were the 2017 property industry winners and losers?
Overall the London Stock Exchange has risen by approximately 7% over the past 12 months although it featured some dramatic drops during February, May and September as Brexit has taken its toll. These have been mirrored within the property industry as both Brexit but also several much reviled government initiatives including higher Stamp Duty and the fees ban, have been announced. And the ten property sales and letting companies that list on the two main stock markets in London – the LSE and AIM – have been part of this story. Here’s how they’ve fared. Share prices Purplebricks – up by 152% After a stunning start to the year which saw its share price rise from £1.50 to £5.13 by August, a recent BBC investigation, several ASA reprimands and problems with review sites, investors have cooled their ardour for its stock, which finishes the year at £3.78p – but still 152% up on January. Savills – up by 41% While everyone’s been talking about Purplebricks, Savills share price has been skyrocketing without too many people noticing, up from £6.88 in January to £9.71 today – an increase of 41%, helped mainly by its global exposure to both booming commercial and…
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Features
House price indices: why we’re Living on ‘Hope Terrace’
Designs on Property tracks and summarises the monthly property indices. Kate Faulkner says, “Lower rates of growth appear to be here to stay, but I don’t think the public or investors appreciate this major shift in property price growth fortunes; we need to be prepared for what happens when they do.”
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Latest property news
Savills and easyProperty battle it out this Sunday…on TV
Two opposing giants of the property industry are due to do battle this weekend, but not in the place you might imagine. The pinstripe suits at Savills are to take on the online orange-ness of easyProperty at 8pm on Sunday during ITV historical drama Victoria (pictured, right) during which the two agents will be screening their new adverts. Savills is expected to be first with its new campaign called A Savills Love Story which, the agent says, will build “on the successful concept of talking houses which featured in the Savills campaign last year, this year’s theme goes a step further in bringing homes, and our deep attachment to them, to life”. The company admits both versions of its new TV advert – one shot on a beach (being aired on Sunday) and the other in a park – are fairly surreal, each showing a couple ‘meeting’ their current and future homes and discussing their forthcoming move. “Savills is a business which prides itself on its hunger, drive, and agility in a changing market. The 2017 campaign was a success and has given us the confidence to press forward,” says Alison Dean, head of consumer marketing at Savills. “We want to…
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Latest property news
UK takes lustre off gleaming Savills half year results
Savills half year results have revealed global turnover up by 15% to £714m and underlying profits were up 27% to to £32.4m. But an otherwise glowing half year report by the company was offset by poor results from its UK operation, where underlying profits dropped by 27% to £5.4 million. Its UK fee income dipped by 4% to £55 million down from £57.2 million and like many of its competitors Savills blames the surge of purchases before the additional Stamp Duty was introduced during 2016 for the lower volumes within the prime residential market compared to last year. Other factors Savills blames include the political and economic uncertainty created by the General Election and Brexit which, it says “make it difficult to predict market volumes for the rest of the year”. Savills said a weak April was offset by a stronger May and June compared to last year, although this is because those months last year were “muted” by the run up to the EU Referendum vote. Worst performing Within the UK prime property market the worst performing sector was new homes in which new development stock dropped by 6% and prices dipped by 4% to an average of £750,000. This compares…
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Latest property news
YOPA claims hybrid agents will handle 50% of sales by 2020
Online hybrid estate agent YOPA has announced that it has raised a further £15 million from investors including the Daily Mail’s parent company DMGT and Grosvenor Hill Ventures, the investment arm of Savills. The company has also made some punchy claims within the statement accompanying the news of its Series B funding, which follows the £16 million investment Savills made in the agency in June last year. This includes that its market share is increasing rapidly and that hybrid agents like it and Purplebricks will handle 50% of all sales by 2020. YOPA, whose founders are Daniel Attia, Andrew Barclay, David Jacobs and Alistair Barclay (pictured LtoR), also claims that the hybrid agency is one of the “country’s top three agents for successful property sale” based on percentages of sales agreed against listing data from Rightmove data. YOPA has a national network of 75 local agents who work exclusively with the company but are freelance not employees, plans to use the new investment to double the number of agents working for it by the end of this year. “After a strong first quarter of trading, we are delighted to have closed our Series B round of funding,” says Daniel Attia, co-founder…
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Latest property news
Savills wins Appeal Court case over unpaid £150,000 commission
It has been revealed that Savills has won an Appeal Court case and is now due a commission of some £150,000 for the sale of Mill Ride Estate near Ascot in Berkshire, which sold for early £7 million in 2012. The estate used to be land and stables but during the 1990s was laid out as a golf course with a clubhouse (pictured). It was bought by Sidemanor Ltd in 2003, a company owned by London and Argyll-based businessman Peter Blacker (pictured, left) Savills were instructed to sell the property in 2012 and produced several valuations ranging from £2.5m to £10m, the higher of which assumed that planning permission could be gained for a large detached residence within the estate’s grounds, and vacant possession of a cottage. Savills also produced a document outlining what was to be sold including how, should the property sell, they would be due to a fee. This included the recommendation that the estate be sold via “private treaty” and that “we suggest that the estate is offered for sale as soon as planning consent has been granted and we advise that the marketing is initially carried out on a very private basis,” said Savills director…
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Latest property news
Savills snaps up Buckinghamshire independent
Savills is on the acquisition trail again after a three-month gap following its purchase of Marlow, Buckinghamshire independent estate agent Granville Residential, taking its number of offices in the UK to 90. The company last bought a rival when it snapped up single-branch agent Montague Evans Channel Islands based in Guernsey in January, and before that the purchase of the Smiths Gore mainly rural network of 31 branches for £40m in April 2015. Lettings specialist Granville Residential is a single-branch agent with a prominent branch position on the town’s West Street (pictured, above) and was founded in 1991 as a lettings-only specialist, like many of its kind it has subsequently gone on to offer sales too. The purchase will add to Savills network of offices in the area including existing branches in Windsor, Henley-on-Thames, Beaconsfield and Amersham. The purchase, Savills says, is part of push to invest in its lettings division, which is headed up by Jane Cronwright-Brown (pictured, below). “The branch will be rebranding entirely as a Savills branch and all its customers have been contacted to let them know about the change-over the Savills brand,” she told The Negotiator. “We are delighted to have completed on the purchase and very…
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