Revealed: how many brands, branches and staff remain with Countrywide

Countrywide has revealed precisely how many brands, branches and staff it has following the extensive and multiple restructurings of recent years.

In terms of sales and lettings, the company says it has “approximately” 649 physical locations across 52 brands - which it describes in its annual report as “unparalleled coverage of the UK property market.”

Within that figure, in London it now has 231 physical locations across 13 brands.

It also says it has a network of “650 mortgage and protection consultants operating under the Countrywide brand” in addition to operating the separate Mortgage Intelligence network.

In terms of staff - a volatile area of churn in recent years - Countrywide’s annual report says voluntary turnover in 2017 was no elss than 27 per cent, slightly below the 2016 figure of 29 per cent. 

Specific figures are not given about employee relations cases across the Countrywide group, except that they fell by 28 per cent in 2017 compared to 2016.

The group now has 5,979 female employees and 4,698 males; there are no comparable figures given for 2016. 

Countrywide’s chief financial officer, Himanshu Raja, writes in the report that the group’s future performance is dependent on a number of market and macroeconomic factors such as the health of the housing market within the UK, but specifically it also depends on:

- a recovery of Countrywide’s pipeline to 2017 levels;

- achieving improved exchanges per branch and associated productivity measures in other areas;

- undertaking measures to mitigate the effect of the letting agents’ fees ban from 2019; and 

- successful savings from initiatives currently underway.

As we reported yesterday, in 2016 Countrywide spent £8,109,000 on redundancy costs as part of its ongoing organisational restructuring.

You can see the full 132-page annual report here.