MILLER Homes has highlighted “robust” demand for its houses in Scotland – despite “unprecedented political uncertainty” – as it reported a hike in first-half profits.
The Edinburgh-based builder, now owned by private equity giant Bridgepoint following a £655 million takeover in 2017, made an interim operating profit of £77.8m, 10 per cent more than for the opening half of 2018.
Miller said demand for quality new-build homes in “regional” markets such as Scotland continues to be high, noting that core and joint venture completions had increased by 13% over the period to 1,684 homes.
However, while the firm’s operating margin was maintained at 20%, its average selling price (AS) dipped to £243,000 from £248,000. Miller said the fall reflected the sale of 89 lower value units in a “legacy development”, adding that excluding those homes its ASP would have been £249,000.
Noting that the housebuilder is operating amid “unprecedented political uncertainty”, Miller said it has made plans for a no-deal Brexit. “We remain confident in the resilience of the UK regional housing markets in which we operate,” it said. “Customer demand has remained strong set against a backdrop of competitive mortgage rates but just as importantly an overwhelming need for many of our customers to acquire a new home. The majority of our housebuild materials (90 per cent) are manufactured in the UK; however a full review has been undertaken with contingency plans in place to ensure the impact on material supplies is mitigated.”
Miller said it invested £24m in new land in Scotland, on which it will build 528 homes, over the period. It is currently selling homes on 21 “live” sites across Scotland.
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