Countrywide has become the latest estate agency casualty of a pre-election depressed housing market, but it plans to double the size of the business and London is a target, its chief executive said.
The group, which counts Bairstow Eves among its brands, saw the number of homes it sold drop 12% to 30,440 in the six months to June 30.
Buyers were dubious about threats of a mansion tax in the May general election. Countrywide saw its pretax profit fall to £28.9 million from £37 million.
Alison Platt, chief executive, said: “As anticipated, the first half of the year saw depressed activity in the UK residential sales market.
“However, the benefits of our strategy to diversify the group’s revenue streams were underlined by Countrywide’s ability to ride those challenges with 50% of our profits derived from sources independent of the UK housing transaction market.”
However the firm said there were signs of improvement in the residential sector, and it intends to double the size of the business by 2020.
"The building our future programme will include a mixture of organic growth, investment and acquisitions," Platt said.
She added that the group would be looking for growth in the capital.
Broker Jefferies said it is "a bold decision." "The easy path would have been to run the group for cash and tweak rather than revamp the strategy."
Shares decreased 32p to 521p.
