The top agents are powering ahead. Booming property markets and a benign economic climate are making for fast growth: the 73 respondents to our survey now earn a total of £2.2bn in the UK.
Like for like, the turnover of the EG top agents is, on average, 16% up on last year.
The Premiership, the top 10 firms, is unchanged: no promotions or relegations this year. Savills is champion, winning the silverware for the seventh consecutive year with turnover of £255m. CBRE and Jones Lang LaSalle retain their second and third places, and there still remains a £61m gap between Savills and its nearest rival.
However, at the bottom of this big-boys’ league, Cushman & Wakefield has nudged up a place, ahead of Lambert Smith Hampton. C&W’s turnover is 23% up at £73.5m.
“It’s a mixture of everything,” says its European chief executive, John Travers, about the growth. “Capital markets – our investment and advisory business is the biggest element in it.”
Just below the Premiership, Atisreal benefited from the Chesterton fallout, taking on most of its UK office teams and stepping up UK turnover and profit by a third. But Atis has failed, so far, to claw its way into the top 10 (see table opposite). It stands exactly where it did last year, at number 13.
Outside the top 10, other rankings are also fairly static.
But one star stands out. Chase & Partners has been zooming up the league. Over the past two surveys, the leisure and retail specialist has more than doubled its turn-over and this year it climbs another eight places to come in at number 50.
“We’re exactly doing what we’ve always done,” says senior partner Graham Chase, noting that the investment side has done particularly well in this market. He also thinks that the firm’s focus on both in- and out-of-town retail helps.
“The team that’s come together at Chase & Partners is first class. I’m very proud of it,” he says.
“We do have a very very good client base who are extremely good to us and work well with us. We built that side up over a number of years and, although it’s been slow, I think that’s the way to build up the business,” Chase adds.
It’s been a busy year for the top agents: 40% have embarked on new ventures. For some, this has involved either opening or acquiring new offices for their networks.
For example, GVA Grimley has been busy, expanding its UK network with a new office in Belfast, taking on Lamb & Edge in Newcastle, Eric Wright & Co in Glasgow, and Mappin Planning & Design in Edinburgh. It also absorbed a five-strong leisure team from Chesterton.
New financial areas are also being explored. CBRE is going into loans and derivatives; DTZ has spent £24m on a 50% interest in Rockwood Realty, a US capital markets consultancy specialising in real estate; and Knight Frank has launched its first fund, and set up Rutley Capital Partners, its investment management business.
Other diversifications include moves into town planning (Eddisons), new homes and development (Strettons, Montagu Evans) and hotels (Cushman & Wakefield).
But the subtext to this expansion is consolidation. Over the past year, another three of EG’s Top Agents have been persuaded into the arms of larger firms. CBRE snaffled both retail specialist Dalgleish & Co and South Coast stalwart Austin Adams, while Jones Lang LaSalle waltzed off with Thames Valley expert Rogers Chapman.
Just last week, Glenny, which is still recorded separately in our table, was bought by Savills for £9m.
CBRE’s £21.4m acquisition of Dalgleish underscores the desirability of high-earning specialists. Dalgleish, and other similarly lean and lucrative niche firms, have been consistently high up in the rankings of turnover per head. This year, for example, retail wizards Churston Heard and Briant Champion Long come in at numbers 2 and 3.
But the top spot for pounds per person goes to new boy GBR Property. This Birmingham-focused team of five pull in £213,400 each. Remarkably, they did this without any in-house admin support.
“We are five pretty self-sufficient blokes,” says one of the founder directors, Simon Robinson. “We’re in a managed office building, but we probably used the secretarial services no more than once or twice in the year and photocopying, two or three. We tapped away and did it all ourselves.”
At the other end of the size spectrum, CBRE is again the most efficient money-spinner of the big international firms. Its 14,375 staff pulled in £143,142 apiece, taking it just ahead of JLL.
CBRE is one of the six truly global agents in the table, in that it runs its business on three or more continents. With worldwide revenue of £1.6bn and a global network of 365 offices, CBRE keeps hold of the global number 1 position it first achieved through its merger in 2003. It is twice the size of its nearest rival, Jones Lang LaSalle, thanks to its much bigger presence in the US.
Below these two, the pecking order of global firms is unchanged from last year. (Our rankings do not include strategic alliances such as GVA Grimley’s, Colliers CRE’s, and Atisreal’s.)
All six of the global agents are doing very nicely. Taken together, they earn £4.4bn, and, on average, their revenue is 21% up on last year’s. The main markets remain the US and Europe/Middle East, accounting for half and 37% of turnover respectively.
But this weighting is likely to change as other markets, especially the Asia/Pacific region, rise in importance. This year, five of the global giants have said they intend to open additional offices in Far Eastern markets.
In Europe, CBRE has also seized the top spot, having overtaken Jones Lang LaSalle. It has expanded its office network, and now earns £329m in Europe, 40% of it outside the UK.
As for next year, EG‘s Top Agents are overwhelmingly positive: 99% expect to increase their turnover. They are taking a slightly more cautious line on profits. Although three-quarters are predicting an increase, nearly a quarter expect profits to be static.
Nonetheless, four-fifths of EG‘s Top Agents say they will be taking on more staff, and 23 firms are expecting to increase their number of offices. The party continues.
Click here to see the top agents by UK turnover (1-38)
Click here to see the top agents by UK turnover (39-73)
Click here to see the top agents by turnover per head (1-38)
Click here to see the top agents by turnover per head (39-73)
