A YORK housebuilder has posted strong results for the first half of the year driven by surging house prices.

Persimmon has also revealed it has £1.82bn worth of forward orders across the UK as it shares its latest trading update for the year to June 30.

Dean Finch, Group chief executive, said: "Persimmon performed well during the first half of the year delivering new home sales completions approaching the levels achieved in the first half of 2019.

"I am particularly pleased that we are continuing to achieve pre-Covid build rates across our sites whilst successfully maintaining higher levels of build quality and customer service.

"Our current HBF customer satisfaction score is 91.91 per cent, with Persimmon’s monthly performance trending ahead of five star for the last 18 months. We are providing much-needed new homes to our customers whilst continuing to drive forward our ambition of building right, first time, every time.

“Customer demand for our new homes has been strong right across the UK with healthy sales reservation rates through the period. The Group has an excellent forward order book at the end of June of £1.82bn."

He added: “In supporting the Group’s high-quality growth we are taking advantage of attractive land investment opportunities and successfully brought over 10,000 new plots into the business across 48 locations in the period.

"We remain focused on progressing our pipeline of new sales outlets through the planning system and into production, and on our ongoing build programmes, to provide improved stock availability and choice for our customers.

“Persimmon is well placed for the future with a strong balance sheet and healthy liquidity. As such, we are pleased to announce the accelerated payment of the surplus capital distribution of 110p per share in respect of the year ended 31 December 2020, which will be paid on 13 August 2021.”

Highlights of the year to date, include:

  • 7,406 legal completions (2020: 4,900, 2019: 7,584)
  • Total revenue of £1.84bn (2020: £1.19bn, 2019: £1.75bn)
  • Forward sales of £1.82bn (2020: £1.86bn, 2019: £1.62bn)
  • About 285 active sales outlets on average throughout the first half with about 85 forecast to open in H2 2021
  • Cash of £1.32bn (2020: £0.83bn) and land creditors of c. £365m (2020: £374.5m)