Bovis Homes sees drop in reservations and sales

Homebuilder Bovis Homes announced it sold 6% fewer homes last year.The House builder said the number of houses sold during 2007 dropped to 2,930 from 3,123 the year before. The average sales price also fell to £179,400 from £183,700.

Bovis said prices for its homes sold in the private sector went up by 4%, but an increase in the proportion of social housing produced dragged down average sales figures although its forward sales book stood at 816 reservations at the start of this year, down 19% from the beginning of 2007. But this year's reservations figure was up 23% on two years ago, according to the group.

The group said: "Looking ahead, a number of external market metrics suggest that activity in the UK housing market has slowed, both in terms of the lower rate of house price growth and in terms of the reduced number of new mortgages being issued...Given the rapid rate of emergence of these trends and an expectation that interest rate cuts will continue, the outlook for 2008 is not clear at present."

Its fair to say that the housing market data so far this year has been mixed, with mortgage lender Halifax saying that prices rose by 1.3% during December, wiping out some of the falls seen during the previous three months.