Taylor Wimpey unveils £250m dividend bonanza

Taylor Wimpey chief executive Pete Redfern said the special dividends will be on top of regular payouts.

Taylor Wimpey has 50 sites in Yorkshire, and it employs 576 staff in the region. The average price of a Taylor Wimpey house in Yorkshire in December last year was £164,000, compared with £152,000 in December 2012; a clear sign that the housing market is recovering.

Britain’s housing market recovery picked up last year after the Government launched a scheme to help struggling house buyers to obtain mortgages. Some economists are worrying about the possible emergence of a house price bubble.

British house prices rose by 8.4 per cent in 2013, mortgage lender Nationwide said in January. A poll of 27 economists and analysts has forecast that house prices will rise by another seven per cent this year.

Taylor Wimpey said it would pay a £50m special dividend in July 2014 and another £200m in July 2015, with plans for more after that.

“It isn’t just a 2014, 2015 event – we see it as being an ongoing part of the strategy,” Mr Redfern said. “We do see the £200m that we are proposing for 2015 as being a signal of the rough (annual) size.”

Other house builders have also announced similar payouts to shareholders.

On Tuesday, Persimmon brought forward its £1.9bn distribution plan, while Berkeley Group accelerated a dividend payout to shareholders in December.

Taylor Wimpey said its profit before tax and exceptional items for the year to December 31 rose 47.6 per cent to £268.4m, with revenue up 13.7 per cent to £2.3bn.

Taylor Wimpey’s order book at February 23 stood at £1.49bn. It completed 11,696 homes over 2013, and said it had sold about 55 per cent of its expected 2014 completions.

Panmure Gordon analyst Mark Hughes said that, while Taylor Wimpey’s results and dividend plans were positive, the stock and sector had had such a strong run that investors were now looking to take profit.