Housebuilder Persimmon has thanked the "resilience of the UK economy" for helping drive an 11% surge in forward home sales since the start of the year.
The Charles Church group said total forward sales, including legal completions, had leapt to £2.6 billion in the year so far, up from £2.3 billion a year earlier.
Its weekly private sales rate is running 12% higher since the end of February, bringing the total of homes sold so far in 2017 to 8,928 at an average selling price of around £229,500.
Persimmon said: "Persimmon's operational performance continues to be excellent, with the group delivering higher volumes of newly built homes in local communities across all our regional markets, supported by the resilience of the UK economy.
"The prevailing disciplined approach to mortgage lending is enabling customers to buy newly built homes on attractive but sustainable terms."
The update came as the firm braced for shareholder ire at its annual general meeting (AGM) at York Racecourse on Thursday amid concerns over pay plans for top bosses.
Shareholders advisory groups Glass Lewis and Pirc had recommended investors oppose its remuneration report, raising worries over long-term bonus plans for executive directors.
Pirc said shareholders should oppose the pay policy and incentive share plan because of "excessive" maximum rewards.
However, 90.19% of shareholders approved the annual report on remuneration at the AGM, while 96.67% also backed a new remuneration policy outlined by the firm.
Rival builder Crest Nicholson suffered a shareholder revolt last month when more than 58% of investors voted against its remuneration report after the firm slashed profit targets that help determine performance-based bonuses for its directors.
Shares in Persimmon closed up more than 2% on the FTSE 100 Index.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here