In a recently issued trading update, the firm revealed that UK housing market fundamentals remain supportive with low-interest rates, improving levels of mortgage availability, ongoing government support and strong customer demand.
Persimmon's revenue reached £1.84bn, up on last year’s £1.19bn, with forward sales standing at £1.82bn. The group says its average weekly private sales rate per site for the first half was over 30% ahead of 2020, the increase reflecting the unprecedented site shutdowns in 2020 due to the pandemic, but was also around 20% ahead of 2019. Persimmon had around 285 active sales outlets on average throughout the period with about 85 forecast to open in the second half of this year.
Dean Finch, Persimmon 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 91.9%, 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.”
