Taylor Wimpey buoyed by housing market resilience ahead of elections

23rd Apr 2015 08:04

UK housebuilder Taylor Wimpey delivered a bullish statement to the market on Thursday, saying that a strong economy has prompted an upbeat start to the spring selling season.The company said that customer confidence and housing demand still remains good despite uncertainty ahead of the general elections next month.Chief executive Pete Redfern said the UK housing market continued to grow during the first four months of 2015, "with increasingly competitive mortgages and secure employment prospects underpinning homebuyers' confidence".Taylor Wimpey achieved an average private net reservation rate of 0.76 sales per outlet per week for the year to date, up from 0.74 at the same time last year, while cancellation rates remained low at 11%.At 8,200 homes, the order book was more or less stable over the prior year, but the value of the order book has grown by 12% to £1.9bn.Average selling prices in the private order book have risen 14% from the same time last year to £282,900.As for the land market, the company described conditions as "benign" with the short-term landbank standing at 78,000 plots at the end of March."The uncertainty surrounding the general election outcome has not impacted customer confidence, and underlying demand remains high," Taylor Wimpey said.Despite the positive outlook, the stock was down 0.7% at 163.1p by 08:38.Broker Shore Capital described Thursday's statement as a "fairly typical" update from the company with limited detail or new news."Much of the statement is really a broad market commentary. That said the numbers that are given point to trading being in line with our slightly above consensus estimates for 2015," said analyst Robin Hardy.