Estate agents to share £77m bonus

Estate agents at Savills will share in a bonus of as much as £77m after sales of multimillion-pound houses and commercial properties continued to prosper in the first six months of the year.

While the mid-market residential housing market has slowed, Aubrey Adams, the chief executive of Savills, said the company had still enjoyed a record year. "Residential property accounts for only 18 per cent of our business. The top end of the residential market, that is houses worth more than £1m, has not acted in the same way as the rest of the market. Sales in this segment have actually risen over the half-year and prices are holding up," he said.

Staff at the company could be on course for a windfall of up to £77m, Mr Adams said, if expensive house sales continued to strengthen. Last year, about 2,000 staff enjoyed a bonus of about £70m.

Savills posted a 15 per cent rise in pre-tax profits to £19.9m for the six months to the end of June, with a strong rise in commercial property prices offsetting weaker conditions for mid-market residential properties. While high street retailers have been suffering and have been less keen to expand amid a slump in consumer spending, out-of-town retail space is still in high demand.

Mr Adams said the whole residential market had picked up in the past few months, adding to hopes that last month's interest rate cut is reviving the UK's ailing housing market. "We think the top end of the market will see growth of around 4 or 5 per cent for the year, with the mid-market being up no more than around 3 per cent. We see no evidence of a crash. People are just slowing down their house-buying activity, taking longer to go through with a purchase than perhaps they were."

Separately, the housebuilder Wilson Bowden said yesterday the market for newly built homes was the worst it had seen in 10 years. David Wilson, its chairman, reported a 13 per cent drop in interim profits.

Following on from its rivals Wimpey and Taylor Woodrow, Wilson Bowden predicted no recovery until next spring in the weak UK housing market. The company reported only a slight rise in visitor numbers to its sites over the past few weeks, while its average selling price over the period fell to £194,500 from £211,900.