The housebuilder Taylor Wimpey has been saying that sales have been ?robust? making many involved in with the company feel relieved about the situation of the housing market, The Times has reported.
From the same time since 2008, the rate of sales for each development in March almost doubled, thanks to the number of first-time buyers increasing. However, despite the rate going from 0.34 to 0.61, only 350 sites were selling houses, which is down from 500 last year.
Pete Redfern, chief executive of Taylor Wimpey, 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.? Mr Redfern has said that shared equity schemes and the Government?s HomeBuy Direct scheme has given confidence to first-time buyers, triggering an increase.
This follows the announcement from Persimmon, Britain?s second-biggest housebuilder, that sales volumes have been better then expected since the beginning of 2009. It is not known if there has been any increased sales due to the rise in housing visits that housebuilders are saying occurred earlier this year.
Taylor Wimpey had a difficult last year, with a ?1.8 billion loss after huge writedowns in the value of its property portfolio and excluding the writedowns made a pre-tax loss of ?74.7 million. The consequence of this was the average price of a Taylor Wimpey home falling from ?191,000 to ?170,600.
The housebuilder should be able to benefit from the ?500 million housing stimulus package announced in last week?s Budget. Mr Redfern said Taylor Wimpey had plans to take advantage of the package: ?We have around six or seven sites where we have to build more infrastructure that might benefit from the measures.?
