Savills confident with full year results ‘meaningfully’ up

REAL estate advisor Savills is anticipating full year results for 2016 to be “meaningfully ahead” of previous expectations after experiencing a strong finish to the year.

In a trading update on its performance for the 12 months to December 2016, the company said it rounded off the period with the completion of significant volumes of commercial and residential transactions in a number of its businesses around the world and benefited from further sterling devaluation.  

In the UK, Savills said it saw increased market share in commercial investment transactions, primarily as a result of the post-referendum interest emanating from overseas.

“In addition, notwithstanding a slower December, our UK residential business performed rather better than anticipated, with the top end of the market showing similar currency-related drivers of investment activity from international buyers.These factors largely mitigated the anticipated reduction in transactional activity during the year,” the company said.

“In the current year, against the backdrop of heightened uncertainty over global economic prospects, geopolitical risks and rising bond yields, we expect a tempering of the strong transaction volumes of recent times in many markets.Accordingly we retain our original expectations for 2017.”

Savills will report 2016 full year results on March 22.