It said that reservations over the past four months have been up 14% on the same period of 2010 and average selling price up 7%. Prices are up because of a change in the product mix, rather than market improvement, however.
Bellway has continued to invest in land, spending £71m on land and land creditors and contracted to acquire around 1,400 plots since 1 August.
In an interim management statement the board said that it anticipates legal completions for the six months ending 31 January 2012 to be up 5%, with an operating margin at least as good as that achieved in the previous six months of nearly 10%.
The company said that it was well positioned to continue its three pronged strategy of volume, average selling price and operating margin growth. The order book at 30 November was £458m, up from £440m a year before.
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