Savills shares slide as Middle East war shakes property market

Shares in property giant Savills slid eight per cent as the Iran war shakes the confidence of the UK’s property market.

The FTSE 250 firm’s share price fell by 7.98 per cent on Thursday to 922p, leaving the stock down six per cent in the year so far.

Adam Vettesse, market analyst at eToro said the share wobble comes despite solid results.

“Savills is executing well operationally, but with transaction markets still sensitive to interest rates and global uncertainty, investors appear reluctant to chase the shares higher just yet,” he said.

Savills has warned it is “difficult to assess” the impact to its Middle East operations as the estate agent giant braces for the fallout from the Iran war.

The firm said it employs around 800 staff in the region, which has historically been a key area of growth, accounting for as much as five per cent of its pre-tax profit.

“Our immediate focus has been on ensuring that they remain safe,” Savills said.

“Clearly, it is difficult at this stage to assess the potential impact of the conflict in the Middle East, including any broader macroeconomic or geopolitical effects.”

Despite the turbulence, the estate agency said it would double down on plans to invest in the region: “In the Middle East, we will continue to improve the breadth of our services lines in both transactional activity and consultancy.”

The Iran war has provoked a panic among the mortgage sector as lenders pull deals at the fastest rate since the Liz Truss mini-Budget, with nearly 500 homeowner mortgages having disappeared from the market in recent days.

Savills snaps up real estate bank

The estate agency posted growing profit and revenue and announced its billion-pound takeover of a US real estate investment bank on Thursday.

Savills has agreed to buy Eastdil Secured Holdings for $1.1bn (£827m), and will fund the buyout with debt and the issue of new shares – equivalent to 16 per cent of the estate agency’s share capital – to Eastdil’s investors.

The acquisition makes Savills a “global real estate powerhouse, well positioned as a leading provider of capital markets solutions,” it said. 

In its results for the year to December 2025, the estate agency turned a £101m pre-tax profit, up 14 per cent from the year before, and posted £2.6bn in revenue, up six per cent. 

The company has hiked its dividend per share to 33.8p up 11.9 per cent from last year, and holds net cash of £168m. 

Chief executive Simon Shaw said the firm performed strongly last year despite “the well-rehearsed challenges of tariffs and fiscal uncertainty”.

The firm said uncertainty around last year’s Budget hit property market confidence, but said Chancellor Rachel Reeves “ultimately delivered the least worst outcome for this market”.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), in its property market outlook for February, warned that the sector is struggling to gain momentum in its long recovery from speculation around tax reforms at the Budget.