The race to stay in housebuilding’s premier league is leading to increasingly unreasonable prices for businesses put on the market, according to Miller finance director John Richards (pictured). Miller’s group turnover boomed to more than £1 billion last year for the first time, helped by the acquisition in late 2005 of Fairclough Homes for £262 million. But there have been no follow-up deals so far. Richards said: “We’re looking at trying to buy a business in the south of England. We’ve looked at quite a few businesses but nothing has caught our fancy. Some of the ones that we have looked at, the pricing has got a bit racey. There’s a race to get into the premiership of the housebuilding industry and Barratt can afford to pay a premium [for Wilson Bowden] to get into the FTSE 100. “I’m not critiscising that because as a privately-owned company we don’t need to do that, but I struggle to see why we need to pay double the asset values of companies.”Speaking prior to the proposed Wimpey and Taylor Woodrow merger, Richards said he expected to see more deals among the top four or six housebuilders.