Housing market boost from Taylor Wimpey

Confidence in the housing market took a boost as prices looked to have bottomed out and builder Taylor Wimpey said summer sales were solid.

While refusing to call a bottom to the crisis yet, Taylor Wimpey said recent months had proved far better than it had expected. Prices were stabilising and sales of new homes, as well as the number of potential buyers nosing around, had increased.

"The early summer selling season has been solid and visitor levels remain encouraging," said chief executive Peter Redfern. "We are cautiously optimistic about trading conditions for the remainder of the year."

The first of the major housebuilders to report first-half-of-the-year results, Taylor Wimpey still had to make huge writedowns - of £527 million - to the value of its land and work in progress. That meant losses for the six months widened to £681.9 million.

Britain's biggest mortgage lender, the Halifax, today reported house prices rising 1.1% in July, meaning prices have fallen by less than 1% so far this year.

Meanwhile, it emerged that off-plan buying was returning to the capital, as one of the capital's luxury residential developments - a luxury apartment block in Westminster's Rochester Row - had received a huge take-up. Almost half the flats have been snapped up at the Barratt site.