Belvoir Lettings in £3.6m south-west swoop

Grantham-based letting agency franchisor Belvoir has bought MAB (Gloucester) for £3.6m through its subsidiary Brook Financial Services.

MAB provides mortgage and related financial services to clients through its network of 63 business partners.

Michelle Brook, managing director of Brook, will manage the whole financial services division overseen by Mark Newton, executive director of the Belvoir Lettings board. The financial services director, Tim Wood, and all four business development managers are staying within the MAB business.

In the 12 months to 31 August 2018, based on unaudited management accounts, MAB Glos generated revenue of £3,870,000 and profit before tax of £575,000. Within the past three years, the number of mortgage advisers within the MAB Glos network has grown from 32 to 88, of which 22 have joined in 2018.

Dorian Gonsalves, chief executive officer at Belvoir, said: “We are delighted to announce the acquisition of MAB Glos, whose network of 63 Business Partners will entirely complement our existing network of 300 property franchisees, both in terms of the management infrastructure and the cross-selling opportunities, creating a total of 364 offices, including Brook, operating under the Belvoir Group.

“We believe that the acquisition of MAB Glos will provide the basis for developing a network of financial advisers to support our franchisees at a local level, in addition to the existing mortgage advice services delivered centrally by Brook. This will give our existing property franchisees the ability to ‘build a business within a business’ by either utilising an existing MAB Glos mortgage adviser or taking on their own new adviser on-site. This will in turn achieve greater penetration of financial services to the Group’s client base for the benefit of both individual franchisees and the Group as a whole.”