ACQUISITION OF HALIFAX ESTATE AGENCY BUSINESS

LSL Property Services plc (LSL), owners of estate agent, REEDS RAINS, was delighted to announce on 16th October  that it has reached agreement in principle to buy Halifax Estate Agents (HEA) from owners, Lloyds Banking Group.

What this means is that LSL, who is already one of the UKs leading providers of residential property services, is now going to be able to provide even more customers with a comprehensive range of services and competitively priced products.

The HEA purchase will result in 218 branches, including 93 franchise branches being acquired across the UK including Northern Ireland as well as the majority of HEA branch staff.  All branches will operate under the HEA brand until the completion of the sale - expected to be in January 2010 - after which time they will be rebranded to Your Move, Reeds Rains or InterCounty.

For existing REEDS RAINS customers, it will still be very much business as usual and we?ll still be offering the same high standards of service that we have become renowned for - only now we?ll have more branches across the network to help us in promoting our properties.  Not only that we?ll also be acquiring established New Homes and Part Exchange divisions so we?ll soon be able to help even more customers.  And, of course, although our core business is seen as residential property services and lettings we?ll still be offering mortgage and remortgage services plus value for money protection products especially as we?ll have a further 135 mortgage consultants joining LSL as part of the acquisition. 

All in all it?s great news for LSL but also for REEDS RAINS ? we?ve weathered the storm of recent times and have continued to support our customers throughout. Now we are looking forward to building on our successes and helping even more customers in the future through our bigger network of branches and people.  

Nigel Favas

Managing Director

Reeds Rains Ltd

16^th October 2009