Founded in 1995, Belvoir operates a nationwide property franchise Group of 463 offices across six brands specialising in residential lettings, property management, residential sales and property-related financial services.

It manages 72,900 properties and has just reported record revenues of £29.6m for 2021 and its 25th year of unbroken profit growth.

Financial highlights for the year ended 31st December 2021 were:

• Group revenue increased by 37% to £29.6m (2020: £21.7m), a record level, with 12% attributable to acquired businesses and 25% to like-for-like growth

• Management service fees (‘MSF’), the key underlying return from franchisees, grew by 18% to £10.7m (2020: £9.1m)

• 39% increase in profit before tax to £9.3m (2020: £6.7m), marking 25 years of consecutive profit growth

• Continued strong lettings bias reflected in gross profit ratio of 56% lettings: 19% sales: 20% financial services: 5% other (2020: 60%:17%:19%:4%)

• Year-end cash of £7.4m (2020: £5.9m)

• Net debt significantly reduced by 65% to £1.3m (2020: £3.7m) despite deploying £4.4m on two corporate acquisitions

• Total dividend per share for the year up 18% to 8.5p (2020: 7.2p)

Dorian Gonsalves, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

“2021 was the busiest year for our sector in recent times with residential property sales transactions at their highest level since 2007, which boosted both our growing estate agency and financial services businesses. We worked closely with our property franchisees and financial services advisers to ensure that they were best placed to respond to the strong market conditions, which drove significant organic growth of 25%.

“In addition to benefitting from the strong market conditions, we took the opportunity to make two strategic acquisitions. Adding the national Nicholas Humphreys franchise network to the Group has enabled us to extend our professional lettings service to encompass the specialist student lettings market. We also further strengthened our strategic alliance with the Nottingham Building Society, through the acquisition of its mortgage advisory arm, giving us access to its online savers who we hope will be our future mortgage clients.

“Since the year end, the Group has added a home-based agency network to its stable of property franchise brands, demonstrating the Board’s ongoing commitment to identifying suitable acquisition targets to support Belvoir’s continued growth.

“Given our significant recurring and reliable lettings revenue stream and our substantial financial services client base to draw upon during what is currently a strong market for remortgages, we remain confident that we will continue to perform well relative to the market as a whole, and that our business model and growth strategy will continue to deliver enhanced value for all our stakeholders.”