Countrywide will be selling commercial property agency
It has been announced that the estate agency group Countrywide will be giving up its commercial property agency Lambert Smith Hampton.
Why is Countrywide selling the commercial property business?
The sale will help to reduce the agency’s net debt by over £34.4 million, with hopes that this will enable the company to go back to sustainable borrowing levels. It still has a long way to go: the last reported net figure for the firm was £90 million in total.
Accumulating debt has been something the estate agency group, which runs brands including Bairstow Eves and Hampton International has been struggling with recently. Last year, the business was forced to have an emergency share placing.
Now, Countrywide is trying to start a process of recovery after a number of profit alerts caused by tough market conditions.
Now that the deal to buy its commercial arm has been completed, Countryside has stated it will now focus its attention on its residential sales and lettings business. to help get the agency back on track.
Who is the commercial property brand being sold to?
Lambert Smith Hampton will be sold to the Monaco-based property developer John Bengt Moeller for £38 million. It is thought that now the sale of the commercial property unit is completed, the group will soon be in a much stronger financial position.
John Bengt Moeller was one of the founding partners of Hanseatic Holding, the real estate group in Germany, and is now running investment manager MSS Real Estate, which is based in London.