TW makes“good start” to 2024

Taylor Wimpey “made a good start” to 2024, it said today (April 23), with the business continuing to see “continued market stability”.

Issuing a trading update for the calendar year so far, the volume housebuilder said the Spring selling season was “progressing as expected”. During the period, it saw good levels of visitors to its sites and an “encouraging” amount of traffic to its website.

The business still expects its UK completions for 2024 to be in the range of 9,500 to 10,000. More than half of these are anticipated for the second half of the year.

Its net private sales rate for the year to April 21 2024 was 0.73 per outlet per week, a slight dip on the 0.75 of the equivalent period last year. Excluding bulk sales, the rate fell to 0.69 (2023: 0.66).

As of April 21, Taylor Wimpey’s total order book value stood at £2,090 million (2023: £2,379 million). This represented 7,686 homes (2023: 8,576 homes).

It said that as previously guided, its first half operating profit margin would reflect “slightly lower” pricing in the order book and build cost inflation for work underway of around 4%.

The expected UK completions range …