With the US subprime crisis spreading to Europe, shockwaves in Northern Rock which would spread to other banks, UK economy growth not looking healthy, increasing trade deficits, sharply rising mortgage costs, falling corporate profits and job cuts especially in the City, and as market turmoils escalates, housing price which shows a first drop of 2.6% (from Rightmove last month), this are the signs of the beginning of a housing crash. PROPERTY SHARES ARE A SELL!

Statement re: Market Speculation (Barratt Developments)




RNS Number : 5014W
Barratt Developments PLC
11 June 2008


Wednesday 11th June 2008


Statement re: Market Speculation


Responding to continuing market speculation Barratt Developments is today confirming the
guidance for its full year ending 30 June 2008
given to the market at its Interim Management Statement made on 14 May 2008.

The company remains comfortable with market consensus forecasts for completions numbers
(18,300) and profit before tax and exceptional
charges (395m).

The Group continues to operate within its 2.6bn of committed facilities and its banking
covenants. Given anticipated completion
numbers, net debt at the end of June is expected to be approximately 1.7bn in line with
previous guidance.

Based on the review of site margins at the time of the IMS, we continue to expect the
requirement for development provisions (often
referred to as land write downs) in the current year will be limited. Once year-end numbers
are confirmed and a detailed review of the
company's 600 developments is completed with our Auditors, the company will provide a full
update.

The Group's Trading Update is scheduled for 10 July.

that seemed to stop the rot

Not for long I guess. It's a good time to reduce loss or get a quick profit.

A statement does not change the net debt or financial situation.

hlyeo98
You still on rift.

no, not on rift but ive and mrp as penny shares

hlyeo98
Can you put the rift web link in the header on the rift thread its on the last post. Cheers.

HOW THE GIANTS HAVE FARED SO FAR...

PERSIMMON

Pretax profit, 2007: £ 582.7m
Landbank: 89,987 plots
Houses sold, 2007: 15,905
Net debt: £ 1 billion
Market value today: £ 1.2 billion
Market value at peak: £ 4.6 billion


BARRATT DEVELOPMENTS

Pretax profit, 2007: £ 427.8m
Landbank: 109,700 plots
Houses sold, 2007: 17,168
Net debt: £ 1.7 billion
Market value today: £ 299.9m
Market value at peak: £ 4.4 billion


TAYLOR WIMPEY

Pretax loss, 2007: £ 19.5m
Landbank: 86,155 plots
Houses sold, 2007: 14,862 (UK)
Net debt: £ 1.9 billion
Market value today: £ 744.2m
Market value at peak: £ 5.5 billion

Its Bleak House for builders as property prices tumble and their share values collapse
- John Waples and Matthew Goodman

Two years ago Mark Clare was riding high. He was a director at Centrica and cited as a future chief executive of the 11 billion energy group.

Then he received a phone call from a headhunter to ask if he was interested in becoming chief executive of Barratt, one of the countrys biggest housebuilders. It didnt take much persuasion and in October 2006 he was in the new job.

Housebuilding was not a sector he knew about, but after dealing with the thousands of complaints he received when he ran Centricas residential energy business he did know how to manage a business and deal with difficult customers.

Clare, 51, was also a man in a hurry. Just a few months after he joined Barratt, he was negotiating one of the industrys biggest takeovers when he bought the rival builder Wilson Bowden for 2.2 billion in a deal principally financed by debt.

His acquisition propelled the company into the FTSE 100 and Clare was running his own show, ranked among the elite of Britains top businessmen.

It was to prove a short reign. Six months after the deal was completed, the mortgage bank Northern Rock owned up to its financial difficulties. It gave the first hints of cracks in the housing market and signalled that the good times were over.

As a precaution, Clare dusted off a file at Barratts headquarters. The company had almost gone bust in the last housing crash in the early 1990s and had kept the DIY manual of how to survive a recession.

Clare opened it up, but little did he know how bad it was going to get. Since that time the groups share price has fallen 91% and the market value of the combined group has collapsed from 4.4 billion to 300m. At the same time its debts have remained stubbornly high at 1.7 billion and there are now serious questions about the companys future.

Clares career as a chief executive is probably over. Those shareholders who have stayed the course are incensed at the way he has gambled away Barratts legacy. For 20 years the company had studiously avoided mergers and acquisitions, but now, in just one deal, Clare has nearly destroyed the company.

How long Clare and his finance director Mark Pain remain at the company lies in the hands of their new chairman, Bob Lawson, who joined this month and has a reputation for rolling up his sleeves at operational level. As one investor put it: The answer is not very long.

Barratt is not alone. Taylor Wimpey, which was formed out of the merger of Taylor Woodrow and Wimpey, is in a similar mess. Its share price has collapsed by 82% and its value has fallen from 5.5 billion to 744m. That fall, usually seen only in high-risk technology and biotech stocks, has also cast doubt over the future of its chief executive, Peter Redfern.

A raft of other quoted builders, including Persimmon, which has pulled off a series of deals, are also facing challenging times. They are downgrading their profit forecasts as margins come under pressure and they build fewer homes. Many have stopped buying land.

Even the sectors most experienced operators, such as Tony Pidgley, chief executive of Berkeley Group, say it is the worst market they have experienced. He said: This market reminds me of the early 1970s. Its much worse than the 1990s. The downturn has been much quicker and sharper. In 1973, no sooner had you blinked, you were in a collapse.

Big redundancies are inevitable. In the last recession, in the early 1990s, it is estimated that about 500,000 people directly employed by the housebuilders lost their jobs. For the past decade the housebuilding sector has tried hard to repackage itself as a disciplined industry that is no longer characterised by boom and bust cycles. That claim has proved to be invalid. This cycle has proved yet again that the best leaders of housebuilders are entrepreneurial founders who can predict trends. That is why the best ones, like Steve Morgan of Redrow and Alan Cherry of Countryside Properties, sold out in the past few years.

Lending, at 25.5 billion pounds in May, was some 20 percent lower on the year. Remortgaging accounted for most of that as homeowners sit tight and new buyers avoid taking their first steps on the ladder amid the downbeat outlook and jump in the cost of borrowing.

The cost of fixed-rate mortgages has hit a 10-year high -- and is set to climb further, analysts say -- as lenders pull cheap deals and repeatedly replace them with higher rates.

Nationwide, Halifax, the Woolwich and Abbey have all hiked the cost of some of their deals since the start of this month, blaming the rise in money market rates.

It is this ongoing fallout from the credit crunch and rise in swap rates that have led to the unusual situation of fixed and tracker rates being much in line with standard variable rates (SVRs) -- those that banks and building societies normally charge only when borrowers come to the end of a special deal.

As a result, some lenders -- Royal Bank of Scotland, Woolwich, Halifax, Lloyds TSB and Cheltenham and Gloucester included -- have stopped offering SVRs to new customers.

Looking expensive at 62p with 1.9 billion debt and profit warning very likely with poor liquidity. Housing market likely to deteriorate with rising mortgage rates will not help.
SELL...


Emergency rescue for housebuilder Taylor Wimpey

Taylor Wimpey is in an emergency 400m fund-raising to save it from collapse.

Chairman Norman Askew and Peter Redfern, chief executive, are also close to securing a deal with its banks to relax lending covenants on bank debt of 1.9 billion.

Taylor Wimpey, which was formed out of the merger of Taylor Woodrow and Wimpey a year ago, is one of Britains biggest housebuilders. It also has sizeable operations in America, where it is building houses in Florida, San Francisco and Texas. In Europe the group has divisions in Spain and Gibraltar.

It has been badly hit by the credit crisis, though, which has made it difficult to sell new homes and has put pressure on prices. In addition the company, which last year built 14,862 homes in the UK, is committed to spending 453m this year on completing land purchases that have already been agreed.

One analyst said: No-one wants to give away these land banks on the cheap. The problem is one of liquidity and this is what the group is trying to address.

Other builders are also in trouble. Among them are Crest Nicholson and McCarthy & Stone, two companies that were both taken private in consortiums led by HBOS. In most cases, banks are being supportive, and within the next three weeks Barratt, which is now chaired by Bob Lawson, should confirm that its banks have agreed to relax covenants on debt totalling 1.7 billion.

The City is keen to hear the details of Taylor Wimpeys trading statement and whether it will give an insight into additional writedowns on the land banks value. It is likely the statement will include a profit warning.

Last year Taylor Wimpey wrote off 283m against its North American business. According to its last set of report and accounts, the company has net assets of 3.7 billion, equivalent to a share price of 352p per share. This compares with Fridays share price of 62p, which values the builder at 654m.

Redfern is also expected to say that the dividend will be cut back dramatically. Taylor Wimpeys pension trustees are understood to be taking advice from lawyers. The builders scheme has a deficit of 216m at present.

The group has already moved to address its cost base and recently announced it will close 13 of its 39 UK offices, which could cost up to 600 jobs. It has also asked suppliers to reduce their bills.

John Charcoal cuts workforce by 25% and closed 3 offices, Manchester, Guildford and Birmingham. 5 outlets remain. Loan approvals last month sank to unpresidented low. CEO and Finance director to leave. Founders John Garfield and Charles Wishart and long time investor Jon Moulton have pumped in an undisclosed sum to keep business afloat. Garfield will take over as Executive Chairman

Don't say I didn't forecast this a couple of months ago on this very thread (or was it the BANK thread???) ;-)

For my next Nostradamus moment, I would not be suprised to see the OFT getting involved in the mortgage market.
Reason? The banks are operating what could almost be called a cartel. They are ensuring that none of them are offering anything dramatically different to the others, by way of rates, criteria or underwriting.
It could also be argued they are maintaining an artificailly high LIBOR & swap rates for their own benefit.
It will not last of course, capitalism will out, but in the meantime it is very damaging to the economy, while maintaining high margins for the banks.

Good to see that you followed my idea, Alan

hewittalan6, quite right, you said watch this space, can't remember what thread it was myself. I suppose one of the fortunate deals was for Hunt, the owner of Foxtons who sold out at around 283million I think it was just before the crunch. John Riblatt sold most of his British Land holding around 16 a share not long before the trouble started. Both turned out to be shrewd guides. Keep watching.

Housing price fall fastest in 16 years


House prices are falling at their fastest annual rate for nearly 16 years, figures show.

The average home has seen 6.3% wiped off its value during the 12 months to the end of June, the biggest annual fall since December 1992, according to Nationwide Building Society.

The cost of property fell for the eighth month in a row during June, sliding by 0.9%, to leave the typical home worth 172,415.

The housing market downturn has now wiped 7.3%, or 13,500, off the value of homes compared with their peak in October last year, with prices falling by 6.4% since the beginning of 2008.

Falls are even steeper in some areas of the country, with the average cost of a home in Northern Ireland sliding by 9% during the past 12 months, while Scotland is the only region to have seen price rises, with the value of property there creeping up by just 0.6% during the year.

Nationwide said the pace of price falls had slowed "significantly" during June, following May's 2.5% dive, adding that prices were still 4% higher than they were two-years ago.

But economists warned that the housing market correction could be more prolonged than previously predicted as the problems in the mortgage market caused potential buyers to sit on their hands.

Seema Shah, property economist at Capital Economics, said: "Evidence is growing that this housing market correction will be sharper and steeper than previous downturns."

She added that recent data showing that activity has slowed sharply, suggested house price falls would "step up a gear" in the coming months.

;-)))))

scotland has gone down very slightly in last 3 months but theres big differences depending on where u r in country just like areas in england.

expect at least 20% decline in next 18 months in uk

It's bloodbath in the housing sector today

Taylor Wimpey fails to get funding and closing one-thirds of its premises and this spells deep trouble ...now 30p...but could go below 20p soon as it says no real recovery foreseen