Property services company Countrywide saw its revenues increase by 2 per cent to £175.1m in the third quarter of 2017.
The company attributed this to a “resilient” performance in London sales and lettings coupled with financial services.
Countrywide’s financial services division includes the UK’s largest single mortgage brokerage which, together with its network, Mortgage Intelligence, wrote more than £15.7bn of mortgages in 2016.
The gross value of total mortgages arranged in the quarter was £4.7bn, up 16 per cent year on year as new intermediary channels mitigated a slowdown in estate agency volumes.
Financial services revenue was £22.3m, a decline of 4 per cent which Countrywide said reflected the “change in mix”, with double digit growth in the buy-to-let business, Mortgage Bureau and Mortgage Intelligence offset by lower transactional volumes from the high street.
Last month Countrywide entered a partnership with Blenheim Chalcott to develop an online mortgage broking business and a set of digital tools for mortgage advisers, which is expected to launch in early 2018.
Alison Platt, chief executive of Countrywide, said: “We have a clear strategy founded on being the provider of choice for property services in the UK and to give customers the ability to use Countrywide across multiple channels.
“During the quarter, we continued to extend multi-channel offerings to our customers, which shows through in the resilience of the overall revenue performance.
“Our focus on cost reduction remains equally unabated and we are mobilising the next phase of our cost transformation programme.
“The market for housing transactions remains challenging and is likely to be down overall compared with 2016.
“As in previous years, the final quarter remains important and we currently expect our results for the full year to be towards the lower end of the range of market expectations.”
Within the estate agency, third quarter revenue was £47.8m, down from £57m while transaction levels were up in the third quarter compared with the first and second quarter.
Revenue was up 1.5 per cent in London compared with the second quarter and revenues across the UK estate agency business increased 2 per cent on the second quarter.
damian.fantato@ft.com
