TAYLOR Wimpey has revealed it sold 1,165 homes in Scotland in 2017, a slight increase on the 1,148 the previous year, but growth was at a slower pace than the overall UK business.
The company’s finance chief Ryan Mangold said trading in the region had been positive, supported by solid fundamentals in the UK housing market, a wide range of mortgage products, low interest rates and the Scottish Government’s Help to Buy scheme.
Mr Mangold was speaking as Taylor Wimpey trailed its 2017 performance in a trading update to the market which reported that total completions in the year were up five per cent to 14,541.
Taylor Wimpey’s net private reservation rate for 2017 was 0.77 homes per outlet per week, up from 0.72 the previous year.
The overall average selling price increasing by four per cent to £264,000. The total average selling price for the period to January 2018 for Scotland was £213,000.
In spite of reporting results in line with expectations, and predicting further growth and performance improvement in 2018, shares in the UK housebuilder fell 4.2 per cent in spite, as investors began to examine the impact economic uncertainty may have on the sector.
Fellow housebuilders Persimmon, down 1.6 per cent, and Barratt, down 1.4 per cent, also fell yesterday.
Mr Mangold said that while supply and demand issues in the housing market did work to its advantage, “you can’t forget about consumer confidence, and that is still important in our sector and for now it is far cheaper for a consumer to buy and service a mortgage at a fairly high loan to value without Help to Buy than it currently is to rent”.
He added: “Clearly there are a huge number of moving parts in all this and it comes down to what extent investment is being slowed down or withheld while there is political uncertainty, or are people just getting on with things? My general sense is that they are getting on with them.”
Mr Mangold said about 45 per cent of the business was reliant on Help to Buy schemes both north and south of the Border, and that unless the mortgage market moves to 95 per cent loan to value at competitive interest rates, Help to Buy will remain a feature.
“The only other alternative is a significant collapse in house prices or a significant increase in wages – both of those are not likely outcomes,” he said.
Scotland’s Help to Buy model has a threshold of £200,000.
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