HOUSEBUILDER Barratt Developments has said the housing market recovery is spreading beyond the south east of England as it highlighted high levels of demand in cities including Aberdeen and Edinburgh but it dismissed talk of a price bubble as "premature".
The group announced a 73.7% rise in pre-tax profit to £192.3 million for the 12 months to June 30.
Barratt chief executive Mark Clare said: "We are seeing the housing market recovery starting to spread beyond London and the south east with a 29.4% increase in our average net private reservation rate across the group."
Barratt reported queues at some new sites as home owners sought to snap up properties while it is also selling off-plan at others.
Among the sites seeing a surge in demand over the traditionally weak summer period was Barratt's development at the former Clydebank College which recorded 16 reservations in a two week period in June.
Director Patrick Law said: "The sales rates in London have been traditionally significantly higher all the way through the recent economic conditions.
"What we have seen in the last 10 weeks... is sales increase across a whole lot of other areas and quite substantial increases."
He added: "Aberdeen and Edinburgh have seen very significant uplifts in sales in the (last) 10 weeks."
Governments on both sides of the Border have devised mortgage subsidy schemes with the ostensible aims of increasing housebuilding and boosting the economy.
The Help to Buy scheme in England accounted for almost 30% of Barratt's reservations in the first 10 weeks of the current financial year.
"Clearly people are feeling more confident," Mr Law said.
"We have the sense that for the last five years, people who want to move home have not been able to move home."
There have been concerns raised about the prospect of a house price bubble with Business Secretary Vince Cable warning yesterday of a risk of the housing market "getting out of control".
A survey earlier this week showed that British house prices recorded their fastest rise in almost seven years last month.
Mr Law said: "I would say that discussions of an overheating market are premature.
"We just got to a position where the market is recovering and people seem to have gone straight from 'starting of recovery' to 'overheating' without an intermediary period whatsoever."
He added: "I think the housing market is still operating at very low historic levels. In terms of the rate at which we are building and the rate people are buying, it is at 50% of what it was at its peak."
Mr Law said that Barratt is increasing its rate of building with output up 20% in the last year.
The company announced yesterday that it plans to build 45,000 homes in the next three years.
Barratt's private forward sales were up 44.4% to £880.4m as of September 8.
Its average selling price rose to £194,800 from £180,500 a year ago.
The company said that 17.7% of sales completions were in Scotland and northern England.
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