Belvoir has told its shareholders and the City that it enjoyed a strong first half of 2019 with its 300 High Street offices enjoying a five per cent rise in fees income compared with the same period of 2018.

Revenue and operating profit are both “comfortably ahead” of the same period last year, both on an underlying basis and including the impact of the November 2018 acquisition of financial services network MAB (Gloucester).

The statement refers to the management service fees income from the franchise company’s lettings stock as “our key recurring revenue stream” and it reports growth across both sales and lettings despite a backdrop of falling sales activity and the introduction of a ban on tenant fees in June.

Commission for Belvoir’s Brook Financial Services was up strongly by 23 per cent in the first half of the year. 

Overall the firm says it’s confident ahead of its formal release of interim results on September 3. 

Dorian Gonsalves, Belvoir chief executive, says: “The board was very encouraged by trading during the first half of 2019 with our franchise model proving to be resilient to changes in the sector and our diversification into financial services providing an additional revenue stream for both our franchisees and the group.  

“We have seen positive results both from our property franchise and our financial services networks, and are confident that the group is well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities arising from a more challenging market.”