Bovis and Redrow today revealed that they would be shedding 40% of their staff, in an effort to control costs as the listed housebuilding sector continued to suffer.
The cuts amount to 950 jobs in total, and with similar culls at Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Barratt, 5,500 jobs have been lost in total in the sector in the last month.
Writedowns
Trading statements for the two were not as bad as the market had feared, with shares in Bovis falling 2% to 311p and shares in Redrow climbing 11% to 107p.
This was in spite of both saying that they would write down the value of their landbanks, and sharp falls in forward sales.
Redrow said forward sales for the year had fallen 45% to 1,189. Bovis’s forward sales fell 35% to 1,482 homes.
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