* UK commercial property suffers ahead of Brexit vote
* Underlying profit rises 11.5 percent, helped by China (Adds quotes, details)
By Costas Pitas
LONDON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Estate agent Savills saidprofits at its British commercial property business more thanhalved in the first six months of the year, hit by uncertaintybefore the EU referendum that has made it harder to predict thefull-year performance.
Savills, which makes around 40 percent of its revenue inBritain, said it had seen a "significant fall" in transactionvolumes ahead of the vote, pushing underlying profits for the UKCommercial business down 54 percent in the first half.
Commercial property was one of the first areas affected bythe June 23 referendum, with investors pulling cash out of fundsand forcing many to be suspended -- at one point freezing morethan 18 billion pounds ($23.4 billion) in the system.
In the residential sector, leading agents such as Foxtons, Countrywide and Rightmove have alsoreported a fall in transactions as the uncertainty sparked bythe historic vote hit a previously booming industry.
Savills said it was maintaining its full-year expectationsbut Chief Financial Officer Simon Shaw said the range ofpossibilities had widened.
"We really just don't know which direction varioussub-sectors of the market are going to take in terms ofvolumes," he told Reuters. "The high is higher, and the low islower."
SIGNS OF STABILISATION
Industry surveys had indicated that interest in commercialproperty was waning in the run up to the vote, with the RoyalInstitution of Chartered Surveyors reporting the largest drop ininvestment demand on record in the second quarter of the year.
Savills said that had been sparked by many of the largersovereign wealth and private equity firms sitting on thesidelines in central London, allowing wealthy individuals to getgood deals in commercial property.
Since then the market had stabilised, it said.
"Now, we're back to a more normal market where we've got allthe big players back," Chief Executive Jeremy Helsby toldReuters.
"Assuming that we start to see volumes picking up, which weare seeing at the moment, I would expect the second-halfperformance to be better than the first half," he said.
In the British residential market, transaction fee incomerose 10 percent in the period but Helsby said the immediatesigns were that transactions would be slightly down in London inthe weeks since Britain voted to leave the European Union.
"I can't give you the stats yet but it would have beenquieter than last year," he said.
Underlying profit at the firm -- which operates in Britain,Asia, continental Europe and the United States -- rose 11.5percent to 42.8 million pounds in the six months, with othermarkets compensating for falling revenue in Britain.
Savills was boosted by strong residential growth across itsregions and many commercial markets including in China whererevenue rose 70 percent. Shares in the firm were up 1 percent to692 pence at 1010 GMT. ($1 = 0.7707 pounds) (Editing by Kate Holton and Keith Weir)
Savills (SVS)
