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Countrywide's turnover for the full year 2018 was £627,000,000. Littlefair's 180 rental properties would generate an income of circa £80,000pa.

Do you know which Estate Agents are still charging 2.5% ? The Agents I speak to charge between .75% and 1.5%.
Good idea to take incompetent Estate Agents out of the equation, but also a good idea to take incompetent LPE's out of the equation too.

The blame for a company's problems nearly always lie with individuals.
It was under the former CEO's watch the massive expansion programme was undertaken. £250m spent, £250m written off. Subsequent share price collapse and debt still at £70m.
Without this CEO there would have been little or no debt, no dilution of shareholders interests, and a share price to reflect this.

Close to the peak of the residential market, a few years ago now, Countrywide imported a number of "experts" with a banking background (LLoyds) and the aim was to become a FTSE100 company. The new CEO was appointed who embarked on the spending spree, who decided estate agency was a retail business, and imported a number of retail experts to redefine the industry.
The harsh lesson learnt was that Estate Agency is not a retail business, people move on average every 10 years or so, and there is very little brand loyalty because of this. Buying branches without retaining the people was a huge mistake, the assumption was the brand was king, not the people.
It cost £250m to lean what was obvious to those that worked in the industry. The CEO went, along with her experts. The share price collapsed, a large number of branches purchased for significant sums were closed, and the fundraising followed to bring the debt down to £70m.
Meanwhile the residential property market contracted and is now stagnating.
The only strategy left now is survival, paying down the debt over the next few years, and with no prospect of a recovery in the share price until this is accomplished and a dividend resumed.
I have paid a lot of money for shares in the company in the past so for me it is hold and hope.

A website called Statista shows the number of house sale transactions for the first quarter of 2019 to be very similar to the number of house sale transactions for the first quarter of 2018 at circa 220,000. Providing Countrywide is maintaining market share (the on line agents are shown as taking 7.2% of the market which appears to be treading water), there is little reason to be too concerned about Countrywide going bust as the valuation and conveyancing arms will be profitable as always.

The various difficulties, such as finding premises, taking on instructions, employing their own staff, and funding the process whilst paying the mortgage and feeding the kids, makes it difficult for quality staff to leave and start up their own businesses and is why the vast majority will remain "wage slaves".
The Countrywide debt does not impact on employees on a day to day basis. Employees who leave are either replaced or not as the case may be. A new business starting up means the number of instructions is more thinly divided amongst the existing and new agents. Supply and demand eventually sorts this out.
There seems to be two ways this can go. Either Countrywide go bust, which appears very unlikely but cannot be ruled out, or it recovers making the current share price a serious bargain - albeit further drops in the share price cannot be ruled out.

You have left us all on tenterhooks - what does happen next?

Interesting article. Is it a case of a Countrywide employee, working from a Countrywide office wishing to steal Countrywide clients so he can start his own business? Or am I missing something?

I have never been an estate agent and post with limited knowledge gained from talking to a number of friends who are agents.
The consensus is that in a good/rising market, with high volumes of transactions, anyone can sell a house.
However in a contracting market a number of the poorer agents will be weeded out, and the good and proactive agents, especially those who have experienced poor markets in the past will perform reasonably well and survive. Paul Creffield has worked for Countrywide through market turmoil in the past, and has the experience to lead the company through the rough waters ahead.
The on-line agents are too well established to go under, but it will be interesting to see whether they can maintain market share when their approach of mainly just listing a property comes under pressure from the traditional agents.
These are certainly interesting times for estate agents and when the support businesses such as valuation and conveyancing show their worth.

The residential property market has always been one of peaks and troughs. Predicting how long this trough will last is key to future performance. It could easily be 12, 18 or 24 months before this market picks up and it is difficult to see where the stimulus will come from.
I remember back in 2000 when the market had stalled, Gordon Brown allowed the banks and building societies to break the 3.5 x earnings cap and by 2007 the banks and building societies were lending 8 and 9 x annual earnings with Northern Rock lending 125% of the value of the property.
In 2010 George Osborne introduced help to buy which fuelled another market surge.
So what will be the next stimulus?
There are still reasons to remain positive about Countrywide, not least that I remember being told that each year there would be a minimum of 400,000 sales due to death, divorce and relocation. Countrywide are in position to pick up much of this work as well as remortgaging and lettings supported by the valuation and conveyancing arms.
But to return to the question of how low will this share price go, there appears little reason to buy this share now. Some long term investors may think we have reached the bottom, some traders can see margins they can exploit, but it could be a couple of years until this share starts performing, and even 4p could not be ruled out.

My friend who went to the Surveying conference in January heard from Paul Creffield that the plan is to keep paying down the debt from profits rather than start paying a dividend.
The various businesses within the Countrywide group all support each other and generate additional income - other than the commercial property arm, so a sale of Lambert Smith Hampton seems a question of when not if.