Countryside “well positioned” for growth

Countryside says that its mixed-tenure housing model has proved resilient this year in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the firm has continued to see strong demand for all tenures of housing.

In a trading statement covering the year ending September 30, Countryside said it completed 4,053 homes (2019: 5,733 homes) of which 1,454 were private (2019: 2,177 homes), 1,691 were affordable (2019: 2,179 homes) and 908 were for the private rental sector (2019: 1,377 homes). The firm was active on a total of 124 sites as at September 30 2020 (2019: 137 sites) of which 62 were open selling outlets (2019: 58).

Countryside said that, despite the national lockdown, private sales activity remained robust throughout the year. Its net reservation rate was 0.78 for the full year (2019: 0.84) which was “at the upper end” of the group's target range of 0.6 to 0.8, despite an elevated cancellation rate due to customer uncertainty caused by Covid-19. “The healthy levels of activity seen earlier in the year gradually returned as we reopened in June 2020 and since then we have seen a sustained period of demand during the summer as the market recovered from the lockdown,” the statement says.

Countryside …