Redrow defies housing market slowdown with record profits
I am doing some work on housing growth projections for a city at the moment. The issue isn’t actually population or employment growth but developer confidence. This is of course a key factor in rural settings where we are desperately short of affordable housing. The latest Redrow results illustrate, set out in this article illustrate just how important developer confidence, in addition to public policy approaches are in overcoming our housing headache. It tells us:
Redrow has defied talk of a housing market slowdown by reporting record profits for the last six months of 2014.
The government’s Help to Buy scheme, low interest rates and a steady rise in house prices helped the housebuilder nearly double its half year profits, up 92pc to £91.2m for the six months to the end of December.
Group revenue rose 54pc to historic highs of £560.6m driven by an 18pc increase in legal completions and a 14pc increase in private average selling price to £300,000 up from £262,000 this time a year ago.
Chairman, Steve Morgan, said that the Chancellor’s radical overhaul of the stamp duty system, ridding it of large jumps in tax at certain points, will boost sales in the year ahead. The order book has risen by 19pc and the average selling price has ticked up by 4pc following George Osborne’s reforms introduced in December.