BUILDER Persimmon shook off gloomy reports about the health of the property market yesterday as it reported a rise in the price of its homes.

The construction group, based in York, revealed that selling prices since the start of January were 7.6 per cent higher than a year ago, leading it to forecast that interim profits should beat last year's £220.3m.

Persimmon's positive tone was in contrast to a report by property website Hometrack, which said house prices had fallen during the past 12 months and that the market showed no sign of recovering.

Andrew Fisher, an analyst at Barclays Capital, said: "We have long believed Persimmon to be the most resilient housebuilder to a slowdown, and this guidance supports our view."

It has tackled the slowing housing market in some areas of the UK by building more of its premium Charles Church homes.

The average cost of a Persimmon property in the first half of the year was £184,000 - up from £171,082 a year ago.

Contracts have been exchanged or arranged on about 6,000 homes since the start of the year, matching the 6,058 legal completions at the same stage of last year.

Revenues from sales for the year stand at about £1.8bn, which is in line with last year.

A statement to the stock exchange said: "Selling prices for new homes remain resilient and we continue to experience good visitor levels to our show homes. In addition, there remains an under-supply of new homes in general across the whole of the UK, which reinforces our continuing confidence in the market and in Persimmon's ability to make further progress."

Published: 28/06/2005