Scottish housebuilder, Springfield Properties, has seen its reservations increase over the first half of its financial year as it sees homebuyer confidence return.
In a trading update for the six months up to 30 November 2024, the developer saw reservations grow year-on-year while its selling prices have remained resilient across the Group’s brands.
Springfield had witnessed some hesitancy amongst affordable housing providers around starting projects due to uncertainty around the availability of public funding. As a result, some of its affordable housing schemes have been delayed, but, following the allocation of £768million to affordable housing supply in the Scottish Budget, Springfield expects providers to be able to proceed with new contracts and see further growth in the sector.
Innes Smith, CEO of Springfield Properties, said: “We are pleased that the Scottish Government has reconfirmed its commitment to delivering affordable housing, which has been established as one of its top priorities. With last week’s Scottish Budget allocating nearly £800million to be invested in new affordable home supply in 2025/26, this reverses the funding cuts from last year and will give our partners the confidence to progress new contracts in the second half.”
Springfield has also reduced its net bank debt to £63.6million from £93.4million year-on-year as a result of measures put in place during the 2024 financial year. The housebuilder continues to see high demand for land, and, with one of the largest land banks in Scotland, Springfield will continue to consider opportunities for profitable land sales of sites that do not impact its near-term development pipeline.
Springfield’s trading update said that the Group remains confident of meeting its market expectations for the financial year 2025, and will provide a further update with its interim announcement in February 2025.
Innes Smith commented: “Trading for the first half of the year was in line with our expectations, as homebuyer confidence continued to increase and we progressed delivery of our affordable housing contracts that we won last year. Thanks to the decisive action that we took in FY 2024, we are in a much stronger position and well-placed to address the significant undersupply of housing across all tenures in Scotland.”
“Springfield continues to have one of the largest owned land banks in Scotland, with a high proportion of sites having planning already in place. We have an excellent reputation for offering high-quality, energy-efficient homes in desirable locations in key housing markets, and a track record of delivering developments exclusively for affordable housing. We also have established relationships with key stakeholders across the housing supply chain and we are particularly excited by the discussions we are having about the provision of housing to support the development of new powerlines and the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport in the North of Scotland. As a result, we continue to look to the future with confidence.”
