York Estate Agency Restructured

An established York-based estate agency has fundamentally restructured its business, resulting in the closure of three offices in South and West Yorkshire.

On 13 August 2008, David Horner and Dave Broadbent business rescue, recovery, and restructuring specialist Begbies Traynor were appointed joint administrators of Ashtons (York) Limited, one of the companies behind the leading York-based Ashtons Estate Agents.

The administrators have successfully brokered a deal with the directors, which will see the North Yorkshire offices continue trading as normal.

 “The founders who know this business inside out have been able to commit further to the future of the firm they have built, and that’s a good result in this challenging housing market and economic climate,” said David Horner.

The credit crunch and dramatic fall off of the residential housing market in South Yorkshire has been blamed for the failure of the expansion plans, which saw the opening of offices in Doncaster, Mexborough and Wakefield in an attempt to replicate the success of York further afield.

 “To secure the future of the business is the most important thing, and we now have a business that is sustainable and able to grow, through a period of economic uncertainty and unprecedented period in the residential market, which has seen our two major competitors in York close three offices in the past couple of months” said Paul Docwra.

“It is a real blow to have lost our South Yorkshire branches and the people we employed there, but our market share and the local property market made them simply uneconomic.  We needed to retrench to the solid base we have in York to protect the jobs of the majority of the employees, which is why we called in the experts at Begbies Traynor.  We are all more than happy with the new company.“ added his brother, and fellow director, Peter Docwra.

Begbies Traynor has also successfully sold the assets and goodwill of the Mexborough and Doncaster branches.