» Taylor Wimpey announce encouraging results

Not out of the woods but still selling properties

Article Published: 1st May 2009

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Taylor Wimpey, one of the UK’s largest and most well known house builders has said that has enjoyed a “robust” start to the year. It reported a doubling of sales during this march compared to last March as the number of first time buyers purchasing their properties doubled.

During 2008 Taylor Wimpey had 500 sites actively selling properties compared to only 350 doing so this year. It owns around 12 per cent of the new build sites in the UK.

Taylor Wimpey’s chief executive Pete Redfern said “we are not seeing anything like a return to the normal situation, but there is significantly more stability than we saw last year and more than we would have expected”. He also indicated that the government’s Home Buy Direct scheme had helped some get on to the property ladder. The builder has sold off most of their existing finished properties at a discounted price and has about three weeks’ worth of properties still unsold.

During 2008 the company ran at a loss of £1.8 billion having taken huge write downs of its value in properties in to consideration. The average price of a Taylor Wimpey home sold at a knock down price to keep trading went from £191,000 to £170,600.