November 2010

ESTATE AGENCY SURVEY 2010

General subject: How has the downturn in the property market since 2008 affected your business in terms of workforce, tools and advertising/marketing?

Name of business: Countrywide Estate Agents

Your name and role: Robert Scarff, Managing Director

Head Office location: Countrywide House, 88-103 Caldecotte Lake Drive, Caldecotte, Milton Keynes, MK7 8JT

Number of offices as at Sept 30, 2010: 1194

Number of offices at Sept 30, 2009: 1095

How does the way the company works now compare with 12 months ago?

Size of workforce?  Broadly the same, with the addition of new colleagues from Sotheby’s International Realty UK and Hamptons International

Use of associates (as opposed to employees)? None

Use of software (e.g. Vebra)? Our estate agency branches use Reapit

Have you imposed any major changes, such as additional services, in light of the downturn in the property market?  Yes  -

• Wills writing service

• Countrywide Rewards – a customer loyalty programme

• The launch of Propertywide.co.uk – our first B2C online proposition which brings together all of Countrywide’s agents and property services e.g. surveying, Land and new homes, conveyancing, mortgages, surveying services, estate agency and lettings

What has been the reaction (from your company and clients) to HIPs being gone? Since the suspension of HIPs, we’ve seen more homeowners list their figures but we’ve also seen the number of withdrawals rise, and speculative sellers with unrealistic price expectations are a key concern.

Use of advertising media: portal sites, newspapers, etc., specifically:

• Where do you prefer to list and why? Do you list on more than one site? Why?

Countrywide reviewed market demand, reduced its advertising spend and significantly invested in its technology and online presence, helping branches to double their web coverage.

We list with every major portal and will continue to look for new opportunities to expand our online presence.

Our aim is to ensure we maximise our online coverage by listing with leading portals and investing in our own websites to double our overall coverage and improve branch leads by 128%.

At a time when many companies would have been reducing their spend, Countrywide recognised the uncapped potential of the internet and created a new in-house Online team tasked with launching Propertywide.co.uk to offer the widest selection of properties and services.

• Rightmove pushed through a listing price increase. What is your reaction? Rightmove offers great value for many agents and we will continue to assess the value of all the portals we list with.

• Are you developing the use of branding options offered on sites? Yes

• Are you using newspapers? How frequently? More or less frequently than in 2008? Are publishers raising prices? Any concerns regarding the use of print media?

We led a move away from newspaper advertising in 2008, reducing our spend by over fifty percent while still growing market share and maintaining our strong regional profile by implementing new online activities and placing free editorials. We now strive to find the right balance between online printed advertising spend as we still believe that newspaper advertising has a role in estate agency, particularly for raising brand awareness and maintaining a strong profile in the local community.

• How do you intend to change your use of advertising media over  the coming year?

We will remain committed to our online technology investment to improve branch leads and explore new opportunities to ensure we reach as many people searching for properties and property-related services through both online and offline media.
Any other comments on the current economic situation and how it affects your business?

The biggest single factor impacting the property market continues to be the availability of mortgage funding and until we see sensibly priced mortgages at 80% LTV and above then we will not see a return to anything like a normal market volume.