In a trading statement, group says it completed 8178 homes in the UK in 2005, and that average selling prices dropped from £197,000 to £185,000.
Housebuilder Taylor Woodrow has warned of the competitive UK housing market after experiencing a 9.7% drop in UK house completions in 2005.
In a trading statement this morning, the group said that it had completed 8178 homes in the UK in 2005, and that average selling prices had dropped from £197,000 in 2004 to £185,000 in 2005 due to the rising number of social and apartment completions.
Its UK order book now stands at £411m, up 1.0% on last year. But although the group said that it had seen “encouraging signs on customer demand in the last quarter” of 2005, it refused to forecast the outlook for 2006.
Across all its operations in the UK, North America, Spain and Gibraltar, Taylor Woodrow reported an order book for 2005 up 16.6% to £1.3bn, with growth in its land bank of 18% to 75,160 plots.
The group’s North American operations completed 3932 homes in 2005, up 8.2% year-on-year, with average selling prices up 21.2% to $453,000.
In Spain and Gibraltar, home completions for the year were flat at 406, with a 5.1% drop in average selling prices to £169,000 that reflects a change in housing mix.
The statement added that group profits for 2005 would be “in line with current market expectations”.
