Connells Group this morning announced its interim results for the six months to June 30, showing strong revenues and profits, despite a drop of 3.8% in sales.

In today’s results, strikingly, it describes itself as the UK’s largest estate agency – a title that has been long claimed by Countrywide, and to which more recently Purplebricks has laid claim.

Separately the Property Franchise Group delivered a trading update this morning saying that it is doing well, and growing revenues.

Connells reports EBITDA of £37.0m (2017: £38.1m) and pre-tax profits of £28.9m (2017: £31.5m), reflecting what the company is describing as a good result in difficult market conditions.

Connells Group’s total income increased by 1.1% compared to the first half of 2017, boosted by mortgage services revenue up 14%, lettings income up 6.5% and C surveying services up  4.3% during the period.

Connells Group CEO David Livesey said: “Our business has produced generally positive results in a challenging period for the housing market.

“Consumer sentiment remains subdued, impacted by economic and political uncertainty, but we are pleased with our performance which reflects resilience across our business operations.

“Our results are testament to the professionalism of our staff and the experience within our senior management teams who have worked successfully through difficult markets in the past, and our strategy of having a broad based, well diversified estate agency and property services business model.”

The business said it also grew via new branch openings and acquisitions, and emphasised it is looking  to acquire sales and lettings businesses.

The group, owned by Skipton Building Society, also emphasised that it remains financially strong with significant cash reserves and no debt and will continue to look for investment opportunities as the year progresses:

Livesey said: “Connells Group has strong fundamentals and we are well positioned to maintain our market leading status, providing the high quality expertise our customers expect from the largest estate agency in the UK – measured by both market share and number of houses sold – and regardless of fluctuations in market conditions.”

Connells results follow those of Foxtons, which has dropped into the red, and LSL whose pre-tax profits have halved.

A trading update was also issued by the Property Franchise Group this morning.

It said it has seen solid growth in the six months to the end of June, with revenues up by 11%, to £5.3m, compared with £4.7m for the same period last year. It said its high street brands have performed well, and that EweMove was trading profitably.

Management service fees increased across the group by 15% to £4.4m  (2017: £3.8m), with total tenanted properties served rising 6% to around 53,000. As at June 30, the company had net cash of approximately £0.5m compared with net debt of £0.7m at the same period last year.

Chief executive Ian Wilson said: “We are pleased to deliver revenue growth across all five of our high street brands and also our online brand, EweMove.

“We remain confident that our franchise model of local business owners, allied to a central support infrastructure, can outperform both small independent estate agency businesses and the large corporate players, and have demonstrated that we can gain an increasing share of the developing online agency market.

“As such, we will continue to leverage our scale and strong financial position t capitalise on the opportunities both on the high street and online.”