Taylor Wimpey confident on house price resilience

Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey has said that while it remained cautious of “continued macroeconomic uncertainty” it was seeing continued resilience in pricing for its homes. Updating the market ahead of its AGM, the housebuilder said its net private sales rate for the year to 23 April 2023 had slowed from 0.97 to 0.75, with cancellation rates nudging up from 14% to 15%. The firm’s total order book value currently stands at £2.4bn, down from £3bn a year ago. This represents 8,576 homes, compared with 11,119 in 2022. Taylor Wimpey’s short-term landbank remains reasonably static at 86,000 plots, with its strategic land pipeline down by 5,000 plots to 140,000. “We remain highly selective in our land additions,” said the group. “As a result, in the year to date we have approved fewer than 500 new plots, but we remain agile and active in reviewing opportunities. The planning backdrop remains difficult, as we have previously noted, with a lack of resource and well-known bottlenecks at various stages in the planning process. “Against this backdrop our strategic pipeline is an important benefit, and we have made good progress with the conversion of 5,000 plots in the period.” Looking forward, the housebuilder said that while sales rates remained lower than in recent years, customer interest was recovering and it expected to achieve completions in the range of 9,000 to 10,500, with completions weighted to the second half of the year. To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews