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Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey today reported a sharp fall in the number of houses built last year, but said it had reduced costs and debt levels to cope with the property slump.
Debt has been cut by more than £300m to £1.55bn over the last six months.
The company completed 13,394 homes in 2008, compared with 20,690 the previous year.
Average selling prices fell to £171,000 from £188,000, reflecting pricing pressures but also a rise in the proportion of affordable housing to just over a fifth.
Taylor Wimpey's order book stood at 4,231 homes at the end of year, dowm from 5,109 a year earlier.
The group warned that it would need to make further writedowns to its land and ongoing projects unless the housing market improves.
Shares in Taylor Wimpey jumped yesterday after reports that it had struck a deal with its lenders for a restructuring of its finances, but there was no news on the ongoing talks in today's trading update.
The group, formed from the merger of Taylor Woodrow and George Wimpey in 2007, once belonged to the FTSE 100 but now trades on the FTSE small cap index. One of Britain's biggest housebuilders, it was once worth £5bn but its market value has plunged to just £226m.
The housing market has ground to a halt as mortgage finance has all but dried up, despite aggressive interest rate cuts by the Bank of England.
"We remain of the view that there will not be a recovery in the UK housing market in the short term," Taylor Wimpey said.
"Whilst we welcome the recent reductions in interest rates, the availability of mortgage finance remains severely restricted and, together with increasing economic uncertainty, continues to have a detrimental impact on consumer confidence."
2009 could be one of the worst years for the house-building industry for a century if dire predictions from senior government housing officials come true. They forecast the number of new homes built in Britain this year will fall below 80,000.
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