Thousands of homes to be built by Persimmon in Kent
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by business editor Trevor Sturgess
Housebuilder Persimmon is seeing confidence
returning to the market in Kent and the south east.
The UK’s largest housebuilder said today it
would complete 9,000 homes this year as the market stabilised.
However, it expressed concern about rising
unemployment and lack of mortgage finance.
Persimmon has developments across the county,
including Ashford and Strood.
Edward Owens, managing director of Persimmon
Homes South East, said: “We are delighted that we are seeing
confidence returning to the housing market with prices stabilising
over the past year, visitor levels have remained strong through the
summer and maintained over the past few months, cancellation rates
are down despite the restrictions on mortgage finance
availability.
“We did set ourselves challenging but
realistic budgets given the economic climate and in most cases we
have achieved much better legal completions than we expected. As an
example, our Bridgefield development in Ashford has seen a real
upsurge in customers moving into their new Persimmon home."
He added: “We remain cautiously optimistic
that the market is steadily improving. We are well placed to
purchase more land and believe it is the right time to move back
into investment of new development opportunities in the right
locations”
Analyst Richard Curr, of Prime CFDs,
said, it was a strong performance with good forward sales.
Trading activity since first-half results in August continued ahead
of last year, with strong sales for 2009 and a further £500m of
sales already taken for 2010, about 50 percent ahead of the same
point last year.
Housing prices remained firm with an increase
of about six per cent in the average selling price of homes
reserved since July 1 to £175,000.
Monday, November 16 2009
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