COUNTRYWIDE, Britain’s biggest estate agent, is poised to buy Bradford & Bingley’s property chain and surveying business for an expected price of up to £50 million, The Times has learnt.

Goldman Sachs, the investment bank conducting the sale, named Countrywide, the 804-strong estate agency chain with high-street brands such as Abbots, Bairstow Eves and John D Wood, as its preferred bidder.

Countrywide has been given a month to finalise the sale and fought off competition for the businesses from the private equity firms 3i Group and Isis Equity Partners, which were on an earlier shortlist.

The acquisition of Bradford & Bingley’s 291 branches would allow Countrywide to significantly extend its lead in the estate agency market just four months after the property services company demerged its life insurance arm, now named Chesnara.

Countrywide also owns surveying and financial services divisions.

The deal, which is expected to be worth between £40 million and £50 million, includes Bradford & Bingley’s SecureMove Property Services surveying business.

Together the two divisions, which were formed out of the Black Horse Agencies chain which Bradford & Bingley acquired from Lloyds TSB in 1998, had sales of £114 million last year. Most of that money came from the estate agency business.

Countrywide’s estate agency division recorded sales of £253.6 million and profits of £36.3 million.

Bradford & Bingley is also attempting to sell Charcol, its mortgage broking business, although the firm is proving to be a less attractive target than the estate agency business after several years of losses. Charcol is believed to be valued at about £20 million, against the £100 million Bradford & Bingley paid for it in 2000.

The sales, set in motion by Steven Crawshaw, who replaced Christopher Rodrigues as Bradford & Bingley’s chief executive in April, represented a change in policy for the bank, which had been broadening its business in recent years.