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More interest hikes will further weaken housing market

High-interest rates and a withdrawal of government support for first-time buyers will further weaken the UK housing market, according to a UK FTSE 250 housebuilder.

Crest Nicholson, which built and sold more than 2,500 homes last year, said the government should step in to support the housing market as it was “undoubtedly experiencing softer demand than the previous year” in a statement to the stock market on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Halifax revealed the first fall in annual house prices in a decade. The housing industry is bracing for a slowdown after 12 consecutive interest rate increases by the Bank of England. The Bank is expected to raise rates further from 4.5% in the coming months as it tries to tame stubbornly high UK inflation.

Peter Truscott, the chief executive of Crest Nicholson, said higher mortgage rates coupled with the end of the government’s help-to-buy scheme in England was limiting the ability of potential first-time buyers to get on to the housing ladder.

He added: “If interest rates continue to rise and remain elevated for a sustained period of time, this will undoubtedly exacerbate this issue even further and start to impact demand and confidence again. We continue calling on the government to recognise this challenge and further support these potential homeowners.”

Data from Halifax, one of the UK’s biggest lenders, showed the first annual fall in average house prices since December 2012. On Thursday, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said “storm clouds” were gathering over the property market, despite a modest recovery in the sales activity during May.

On Thursday, Crest Nicholson reported a drop in sales for the six months to the end of April and a fall in revenue to £283m, down from £364m the year before. The builder completed 894 homes in the half-year, down from 1,096 the year before, and half-year profits dropped 59% to £22.1m. Its shares fell 7% on Thursday morning.

The company blamed the drop in sales squarely on the “economic uncertainty and lower confidence in the housing market” caused by the government’s disastrous “mini-budget” under the former prime minister Liz Truss and ex-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.

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