One of the UK's biggest estate agency and property services groups, with more than 1,250 branches under dozens of local brands, from Luton origins.
Connells Group is a property services business that runs hundreds of high street estate agencies across the UK. Its own brochure of September 2022 says it has over 1,250 branches, more than 700 of them lettings branches, and around 80 local estate agency brands, including Connells, Sequence, Countrywide and Hamptons. Beyond selling and renting homes, it provides mortgages and protection advice, new homes sales, auctions, land and planning advice, conveyancing (the legal work of moving home), surveys and valuations, asset management, energy performance certificates and will writing.
The first Connells branch opened in Luton, Bedfordshire, in 1936. By the 1980s it was among the first estate agency networks listed on the London Stock Exchange, and it later grew by buying other agencies, including Sequence and Sharman Quinney in 2003 and Countrywide in 2021. Skipton Building Society became its sole owner in 2010. Connells was also one of the founding shareholders of the Rightmove and Zoopla property websites. The pages we read gave no formal mission or values statement.
Connells describes itself as the largest estate agency network in the UK, with branches nationwide. Its registered office is in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. The brochure lists regional auction centres in Derby, Leeds, Norwich, Southampton, Liverpool, Exeter, Sheffield and Wales, plus a London-based auction house. Its surveying and asset management services cover England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Because so many local brands sit under one group, a town may have a Connells branch and a local-named branch run by the same business.
The group says it is "one of the only large estate agency businesses run completely by estate agents", and that it started an in-house training structure in 1978, which it says was a first for an estate agency group. Chief executive David Livesey marked 30 years with the group in 2020, and the group's current chief executive is Helen Charlesworth. It also describes itself as made up of "industry pioneers". These are the company's own claims. We found no figures for how many people work for the whole group.
The range of services means a wide range of jobs. There are negotiators and branch managers in sales and lettings, mortgage consultants (the brochure counts over 1,300), surveyors (about 450 at Connells Survey and Valuation and over 700 people at Countrywide Surveying Services), auctioneers, conveyancing and legal staff, new homes specialists, and the finance, technology and support teams behind them. If you like people, property, numbers or law, there is likely a role type that fits. The group's website lists current vacancies.
Website: www.connellsgroup.co.uk
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