• The Market

    The Month
    Figures for April confirm that the first quarter's fall in private house starts is a trend. But rising prices have seen profits remaining buoyant. Confidence in the short term remains strong but into the autumn housebuilders are more wary. The good news is that long-term confidence into 2002 remains high.

    Housing Market Activity
    Compared with April 2000 new home registrations are sharply down again this month in a swathe from Wales, through to the Midlands, to London and the South East – but average new house prices are up by 23% year-on-year as consents remain elusive.

  • The Business

    Stockwatch

  • John Laing has reported a 90% fall in profits as losses from construction operations wiped out a better performance from housebuilding. Pre-tax profits fell to £5.7m. Strong growth was recorded in housebuilding with the company selling 1235 homes at an average price of £238 000.
  • Westbury has announced full-year pre-tax profits up 16% to £62.2m. Average selling price rose 12% to £117 700, increasing turnover to £491.5m. Consented land has risen from 12 700 to 13 000 plots.
  • Prowting has reported full-year profits up from £24.2m to £27.5m on turnover up £26.3m to £244.8m. The company sold 1533 homes at an average price of £150 500 – up £26 800 year-on-year. It predicts average prices of around £170 000 in 2001-02. Consented land totals 5025 plots – or more than three years supply. It also has 12 000 plots in its landbank.
  • George Wimpey has appointed Andrew Carr-Locke, previously group finance director of Courtaulds Textiles, as group finance director replacing Richard Saville, who has decided to leave the company and pursue career opportunities elsewhere. The group has reported an encouraging start to the year with the value of US sales up by 23%. It reports no sign that the slowdown in the US economy is adversely affecting sales.
  • Conservatory roof maker Ultraframe has issued a profits warning blaming winter storms for poor sales. The shares have almost halved in the past twelve months.
  • Analysts are speculating that Miller Group's sale of its civil engineering arm for £20m is designed to clear the decks in preparation for a full stock market flotation.

    Business Fact
    Background on UK housebuilders
    Westbury has announced that 80% of its homes will be constructed using its Space4 modular construction system by 2006. Full production of the units at its West Midlands factory started last month. Westbury expects the factory to produce 40 houses per week by the end of 2002. Space4 will enable the group to make significant labour savings.

    Westbury said it expected customers to pay a premium of between 3-4% because of the precision and thermal benefits of factory production. Westbury ultimately hopes to be able to sell Space4 products to other housebuilders.

  • The Trends

    White Goods Watch
    UK sales of free standing cookers
    The free standing cooker market has seen a number of changes over the past 12 months. Most notable has been the overall trend towards wider range-style cookers.

    Within the electric cooker sector the biggest actual increase in units sold has been in the 59-61 cm range. Although it has seen a slight fall the largest volume of electric cookers is still in the 49-52 cm wide models which sell over 75% more than the next nearest electric cooker.

    The picture for freestanding gas ovens, which outsell freestanding electric ovens, is slightly different. Although the largest selling size is also 49-52 cm wide this is followed by 53-58 cm followed some way behind in third place by the 59-61 cm models.

    The majority (56%) of freestanding electric ovens are fan with convection accounting for a further 33% whereas for gas convection accounts for 97% of all sales.

    Surprisingly perhaps the largest number of mixed fuel freestanding cookers (39%) are 59-61 cm wide while range cookers 62-90 cm wide account for almost 29% and wider than 91 cm models account for a further 19.6%.

    Mixed fuel freestanding cookers despite growing in popularity still account for around 6% of all freestanding cooker sales.

    "Although starting from a very small base mixed fuel cookers have continued to show an increase in popularity during 2000-2001. This has been particularly driven by the success of range cookers, with the 62-90 cm width split leading value growth," says GfK account manager Erika Augusti.

    Did You Know?
    Between 1898 and 1903 developers were building around 150 000 homes per year but by 1912 this had fallen to 50 000 new homes per year – partly as a result of changes introduced in the budget of 1909 which saw a big drop in the numbers of working class homes under construction.
    Source: The Edwardian House

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    Building Homes

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