Housebuilding company Persimmon has seen profits build after it completed more homes and sold them at higher prices.
The FTSE 100 firm has posted a 64 per cent rise in pre-tax profit for the first half of the year to £480million. It completed 7,406 home sales at an average price of £236,199 in the six months to the end of June. In the same period last year - disrupted by a temporary shutdown of the housing market - it sold 4,900 for an average price of £225,066.
Persimmon said forward sales - properties sold before they are built - are up about nine per cent from pre-pandemic levels, indicating that the housing market could stay buoyant after the stamp duty holiday ends.
Persimmon has forward sales of £2.23billion compared with £2.05billion in 2019 and £2.48billion last year.
Despite the end of the stamp duty holiday in September, it expects the fundamentals of the market to stay strong.
However, it said some parts of the supply chain are seeing cost increases.
The Sun