Belvoir Group PLC the UK’s largest property franchise, today announces that it has entered into a strategic alliance with The Nottingham Building Society (‘The Nottingham’ or the ‘Society’).
The alliance will see Belvoir’s established network of franchisees, trading under the brands Belvoir, Northwood, Newton Fallowell and Lovelle, extending their estate agency and lettings services to new locations sited in co-branded existing building society branches.
Under the agreement, the vast majority of The Nottingham’s estate agency and lettings activity will transfer over to the Belvoir Group and the Society will cease trading as its own estate agency and lettings operation for new business by the end of August 2020.
Franchisees within the Belvoir Group will have the opportunity to offer The Nottingham’s members high quality estate agency services, either from existing building society branches or from Belvoir’s stand-alone offices throughout the UK.
In the first instance this opportunity will be extended to a number of franchisees to increase their footprint by taking a presence in up to eleven of The Nottingham branches, to be co-branded, based in Nottingham, Leicester and Cambridge.
The Nottingham said that the change will result in branch closures:
“This will regrettably result in the closure of three standalone estate agency branches and three combined building society and estate agency branches which are more focused on estate agency at the end of July, as well as impacting a number of field based and central support roles” s
The Nottingham branch locations for closure are Enderby; Syston; Western Park; Market Harborough; Chatteris; and Wisbech.
Dorian Gonsalves, Chief Executive Officer of Belvoir Group, said:
“This strategic alliance represents a very exciting and mutually beneficial opportunity for both the Belvoir Group and The Nottingham, and is expected to pave the way for further joint initiatives in the future.
“I am confident that this innovative alliance will prove to be a great success, as Belvoir and The Nottingham already share many core principles, including a determination to ensure that the customer remains very much at the heart of all aspects of the business.”
The Nottingham Building Society had its own estate agency/building society branches when it acquired Harrison Murray – the highly successful and consistently profitable 17-branch estate agency based in Northampton – in 2013. After several subsequent years of losses in its enlarged estate agency division the Society wrote off £4m of goodwill earlier this year.
Mortgage Finance Gazette, in reporting this story, quotes Nottingham Building Society CEO, David Marlow, as saying:
“In total the proposed changes will affect around 120 roles and we have spoken personally to team members affected.
“Whilst we will seek to offer redeployment opportunities from across the society and choice to impacted team members wherever we can it is inevitable that there will not be roles for everyone impacted and are therefore offering job support packages where people do leave the business.”
Purchaser of estate agent writes off £4m goodwill seven years later in difficult times for sector
Comments (6)
Surprised that they hadn’t got out of Agency sooner given their dramatic loss of market share in most of their locations. A natural synergy in Nottingham for example made sense but to then expand their branch footprint out of area was always risky and they never really were a player away from their own patch. What looked a strange move at the time was their acquisition of the Harrison Murray network of I think around 11 Branches in Leicestershire and Northampton which was a strong business particularly in Leicester but this was eventually merged into the local building society branch in most of the locations and their market share has declined rapidly ever since losing over time their stronger BM’s/listers in the process. Currently a shadow of their former selves and probably hemoraging cash in the process.
Smile Please – sounds like a much better deal (long term) for NBS rather than Belvoir. Yes, I can see the short term benefits for Belvoir but taking on real estate, keep open obligations, encashment facilities/cash storage, all sound like liabilities to me(?)
I don’t know the footprint of the Notts BS but on paper this sounds like a good deal – no doubt the BS feels agency might be too tough in this climate and Belvoir is ready to go.
Of course a marriage of building societies and Estate Agencies has always been a recipe for success, many of whom still dominate the High Street today. 🙂
Well done to Dorian and Belvoir!
Real Estate agents will be cutting keys to survive. Rightmoves share price be halved soon with all these agents positively closing.