Surveying delivers market resilience for LSL
LSL- the York-based property group – today said that it was performing in line with expectations despite an “extremely challenging” housing market.
The group, which owns 290 Your Move offices, reported that turnover for the first quarter ended March 31 was down by 3%, with estate agency and financial services dropping by 16%. Surveying turnover was up however by 15%.
Roger Matthews, chairman of LSL, said that the results confirmed the resilience of LSL’s business model in the face of a market downturn with resilience most evident in the group’s surveying division.
“Our surveying division’s activity and turnover is slightly ahead of our expectations and is underpinned by the new contract wins with Cheltenham & Gloucester and Barclays, which started in the second half of 2007,” said Mr Matthews.
“In addition, the integration synergies identified with these contracts have started to come through and will deliver significant full year benefits. We also continue to benefit from strong relationships with leading lenders.”
Mr Matthews confirmed that trading in LSL’s estate agency division had performed slightly below expectations, but continued to deliver cost efficiencies commensurate with lower activity levels.
“This division has been affected by the slowdown in the housing market. However, estate agency trading has been supported by the growth of counter cyclical revenue streams including lettings and the development of a new repossessions sales unit, both of which are making good progress,” he added.
“However we expect market conditions to remain challenging for our estate agency division, with the out turn for the housing market in 2008 extremely difficult to predict.”
LSL earlier this year closed 12 branches and cut 315 full-time jobs across its surveying and estate agency businesses, after house sales fell in a weakening property market.
The cuts were the first large-scale redundancies in the sector, which employs 50,000, since the property slowdown began late last year.
