Taylor Wimpey and MJ Gleeson have become the latest housebuilders to warn of sliding performance, with forward orders cut in half.
At the end of the year, low-cost housebuilder Gleeson had sold 319 plots, down from 616 in December 2021.
In a trading update, Taylor Wimpey said it had been similarly affected. “Ongoing market uncertainty means that sales remain significantly below levels seen prior to the rise in mortgage rates in Q3 2022. Accordingly, we enter 2023 with a lower private order book than in recent years and we expect overall volumes to reduce in 2023.”
Taylor Wimpey sold 14,154 homes during the year.
MJ Gleeson sold 894 homes during the half-year to the end of December, 4.1% fewer than the half-year to 31 December 2021. “This reflected the weaker market and considerably higher mortgage costs as a consequence of the mini-Budget in September 2022,” it said.
But the firm, which welcomed its new CEO, Graham Prothero, on 1 January, said it was “cautiously optimistic of a recovery during 2023”.
This, it said, was due to a number of factors. “Mortgage rates continue to fall from the highs experienced in October 2022, and the need for low-cost, high-quality homes remains acute. A couple earning the National Living Wage can still afford to buy a home on any one of our sites. In addition, there continues to be growing interest from new customers who might previously have considered a more expensive property built by another developer.”
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