<p>Legal completions at Persimmon in 2016 reached 15,171, 599 more than 2015 according to a trading update issued on January 5.</p> <p>Revenue for 2016 reached £3.14 billion, 8% higher than the prior year (2015: £2.90 billion) and the group's average selling price increased by 4% to around £206,700 (2015: £199,127).</p> <p>The firm said that sales reservations through the autumn season were strong with “healthy customer demand for new homes”. The firm’s private sales rate for the second half of the year was 15% ahead of the prior year and second half legal completion volumes of 7,933 were 695 stronger than for the first half of the year (H1: 7,238).</p> <p>“We have continued to focus on disciplined high quality growth to achieve sustainable market share in our regional markets,” said Persimmon. “The two new housebuilding businesses we opened at the start of 2016 based in Perth, Scotland and Launceston, Cornwall have made good progress delivering over 650 new homes in their first year of operation.”</p> <p>Persimmon this week launched a further new business based in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.</p> <p>The value of forward sales at the end of December 2016 is around £1,230 million, 12% ahead of the prior year (2015: £1,103 million).</p> …