Sales of new houses dipped in the weeks after Britain voted to leave the EU but potential buyers have come back to the market, Bovis Homes reported.
Announcing results for the first half of its financial year, Bovis said it sold one house every fortnight on each of its sites since the start of July, down from around 1.2 in the first half.
David Ritchie, Bovis’s chief executive, said the figure reflected a sharp drop in sales soon after the vote for Brexit on 23 June and a recent pickup.
“The first two or three weeks were quite difficult … Whilst we should not judge a year by a six-week period, it’s by no means a disaster. In the last two or three weeks it’s looked like a normal summer market.”
Ritchie said potential buyers still visited Bovis’s sites but sales rates fell as people digested the referendum result amid political and economic uncertainty. The government has provided enough reassurance for potential buyers to get back to making purchases, he said.
“There was a sense of uncertainty over whether [buyers] should move forward … We’ve all gone through a rollercoaster of emotions over the last six weeks. There was a bit of a blip but as things stabilised they got back on with their lives and that is what we are seeing.”
Bovis, which concentrates its building in the south of England outside London, reported a 15% increase in pre-tax profit to £61.7m for the six months to the end of June. It sold a record 1,601 homes in the period and average prices rose 14% to £254,500.
Shares of Bovis and other housebuilders fell heavily after the referendum result was announced, with fears that a resulting economic slowdown would cause a property crash.
Estate agents have issued a string of profit warnings but sales of new homes appear to have held up better than for secondhand properties. Ritchie said Bovis had assured its contractors that it intended to stick to its plans for building new homes.
After plunging by more than a third on the day after the vote, Bovis shares remain about 20% below their pre-referendum level. The company’s shares fell 2.4% to 816p.
