Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us as we report our performance for the half year, first half of the year 2022, and the outlook for the remainder of the year and beyond. I'm joined this morning by Shane Doherty, our CFO, Declan Murray, our head of investor relations, and our head of financing, Tara. I'm pleased to say that the six months to June thirtieth has been our strongest half year to date. We closed 547 new home sales and generated EUR 36.2 million in operating profit. The message today is that we are investing even more in our construction activities to materially increase output against the backdrop of what has been sustained and growing demand throughout the year, and importantly, into the autumn selling season.
We are currently active in 22 sites, having invested nearly EUR 350 million in work in progress, and continued our regional expansion to include new developments in Limerick and Kilkenny. We anticipate that we will close circa 1,500 new home sales by the end of the year, and critically, 500 of these will be much needed social and affordable homes. The business achieved a gross margin of 21.5% in H1, and we expect to maintain that for the full year, having absorbed build cost inflation of up to 8%. Notwithstanding the dynamic macroeconomic backdrop, which I will address in more detail later, we continue to experience robust demand for our homes. With the level of inquiries we are seeing, I expect this to be the case for years to come.
The government's newly launched shared equity scheme, First Home, has already supported first-time buyers across five of our current developments. I believe this is one of the critical initiatives under Housing for All, which will make a real impact for thousands of young families in Ireland. The undersupply of new homes in the Irish market remains the pivotal societal issue, particularly given the material increase in our population. Cairn will continue to play a significant role in delivering high quality, competitively priced homes at scale to cater for this pent-up demand across all tenures, including the state. Now to the key highlights on slide three. With a closed and forward sales pipeline today of close to 2,000 units with a value of EUR 760 million.
This is a testament to both the scale of Cairn today and how our broad range of customers are responding to the quality, location, and pricing of our new homes. Our success in sales underpins our investment in our construction activities. Our overall WIP investment of EUR 346 million is 1.5x covered by our forward sales. We commenced seven new sites this year, expanding to meet the demand for new homes when the broader sector appears to be contracting. Cairn today now supports over 3,000 full-time positions in Ireland across our 22 active sites. The strong performance supports our recently upgraded full-year guidance, which remains very much on target across all financial key KPIs, as you can see on the right-hand side of the slide.
This performance will see Cairn doubling our return on equity for the year to 11%, keeping us well on target for a 15% ROE in 2024. Shane will bring you through our medium-term outlook in more detail later in the presentation. As you can see from the table on slide four, Cairn has a diverse product mix and price points. Our mix has improved year-over-year, and we've seen increases in accompanying ASPs for some of our homes, particularly in apartments and homes for customers in the trade up and trade down sector of the market. However, we are pleased that the company has managed to achieve largely unchanged pricing year-over-year for our starter homes. These homes at a VAT-inclusive price of EUR 375.
Realizable demand at these price points will now further improve to the newly launched First Home shared equity scheme, which as I said earlier, customers have availed of already in the last number of weeks. Moving to slide five, we are undoubtedly in difficult economic times again and the cost of living crisis, higher interest rates will impact our customers. However, the underlying fundamentals of the Irish economy are comforting following nearly a decade of significant economic growth. We know there are challenging times ahead, but these strong fundamentals may provide some relief, particularly in our industry. Our economy is also forecasted to further growth in 2023 and 2024. As you can also see from the slide, our customers are now much more heavily supported by impactful government initiatives and supports. We have the fastest growing population in Europe, as you can see from the next slide.
There has never been as many people working in Ireland, and the main driver of our population growth is inward migration. The standout extraordinary number on this page is the record employment growth of 23%. There are nearly 500,000 more people in employment in Ireland since Cairn IPO'd in June 2015. The obvious challenge is that our impressive record in job creation is not matched to date by housing delivery. The COVID period, while being very different to the economic crisis we are now in some cases presented similar challenges for businesses. I'm proud of how our team responded then, and the significant growth we achieved since has been illustrated in slide seven, with our 2022 output doubling what we achieved in 2020.
This growth will continue in 2023 and 2024, and we are very much on track to achieve our three-year target, which means the company will deliver 3,800 new homes in those two years, end of 2024. On the right-hand side, you will see that the commencements for the broader market who are finding the current environment challenging have fallen by nearly 20% in the March to July period of this year. Slide eight shows the impact on the upward trend of our order book since January this year. I am pleased to report that we are seeing continuing levels of growth and sales momentum for our current autumn launches, and expect our forward order book to continue to increase significantly over the coming months.
The state is a very large customer, and this year alone, Cairn will deliver over 500 social, affordable, and affordable rental new homes to various state agencies. As you can see from the pie chart on the right-hand side, this now equates to a quarter of our sales. Moving on to slide nine, which illustrates how Cairn converts successful planning grants into new homes to deliver homes at pace. We continue to successfully navigate a challenging planning environment in Ireland, clearly evidenced by the figure on the right-hand side of the slide, with over 90% of our guided volumes for the next two and a half years already having full planning permission. Slide 10 outlines some of the tactics that Cairn uses to deliver efficiencies in this inflationary environment as we strive for continuous improvement.
Our core supply strategy is and will continue to be focused on partnering, innovation, and flexibility rather than ownership. We are currently projecting for the full year that the cost of building our homes will increase by about 8% or EUR 20,000 per unit, and we will continue to monitor this closely. Learning from our scale and track record is embedded in our business and culture. In slide eleven, an example of this is the benefit of standardization. Across a number of our current developments, Cairn delivers an identical three-bed semi-detached home in almost all aspects of design and layout. Front elevation changes and tweaks to specification and finishes, depending on price points, are the only differentiating factor in these homes.
Finally, in slide 12, we recently received planning permission for the first phase of Clonburris, our ambitious new suburb of Dublin for 25,000 residents. We will commence construction here very shortly and keep you updated as we progress through this ambitious and very exciting project. I will now pass you over to Shane to bring you through our financial highlights.
Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I will now take a few minutes to speak to you around our financial results and some key macro factors for the first six months of 2022. I'll also cover our financial outlook before speaking about considerable progress we continue to make driving our sustainability agenda. Turning to slide 14. As outlined, we delivered a very strong set of financial results for the first six months of 2022. Our profit generation continues to drive return on equity growth and cash returns to our shareholders. More specifically on the financials, we had 547 unit sales closing in H1. This resulted in revenues of EUR 240 million. Our gross margin continues to strengthen and was 21.5% for the period.
We continue to invest in operating expenditure and innovating our platforms across a number of key disciplines, including construction, IT, and health and safety. We expect that our operating costs as a percentage of revenue will continue to reduce over the course of H2. Topline growth combined with well-considered investment in operating expenditure will continue to drive operating leverage expansion. We generated more than EUR 36 million of operating profit, delivering an operating margin in excess of 15%, demonstrating the underlying strength of our business. We returned EUR 81 million to our shareholders in the period through dividends of EUR 20 million and EUR 51 million of share buybacks. Today, we have committed to a further interim dividend for 2022 of EUR 0.03 per share.
Our business continues to be underpinned by a very strong balance sheet position, including a net asset value of EUR 1.04 per share and a land bank of almost EUR 670 million as of thirtieth of June, most of which was acquired at very competitive prices back in 2015 and 2016. That, coupled with our substantial forward order book and operating capability, continue to make for a very compelling valuation thesis for Cairn Homes. Turning to slide 15. It shows that our closed and forward pipeline of nearly 2,000 units has a net sales value of more than EUR 760 million. Almost 1,500 of these units are expected to close in 2022 sales, with a net sales value of nearly EUR 600 million, with our on-selling season ongoing.
The forward sales component, as Michael outlined, is one and a half times the size of our closing WIP balance, which stands at EUR 521 million. Turning to slide 16. Our balance sheet's position is underpinned by our land balance, booked on our balance sheet at historic low acquisition cost, coupled with the liquidity within our WIP investments of almost EUR 350 million. At EUR 730 million, our net asset position is stated after making shareholder returns of nearly EUR 170 million up to June 2022, including EUR 82 million made in the six months to the 30th of June. At the end of June, we have further available liquidity of over EUR 120 million, even with our incremental WIP investments included. Turning to slide 17.
We completed the refinancing of our senior debt facility in June of this year for a further five years. The term component of the facility is now fully hedged for three years, which coupled with the RCF component of EUR 200 million, gives us a very efficient facility across the EUR 350 million level, which we have maintained as we continue to scale up. It is also a sustainability-linked facility, whose targets are linked directly to our key elements around our sustainability strategy, in particular around decarbonization and biodiversity. Turning to slide 18. Against the backdrop of significant inflationary pressure being experienced globally across all sectors, now more than ever, it is essential that we continue to deliver great quality, value, and homes for our end customers. As Michael covered earlier, our scale business is all about delivering efficiencies at every stage of our business model.
We are the largest procurer of labor and materials in the Irish market. We are broadening the depth of our supply chain and increased our strategic and development partner base by over 30% this year. While the cost of building our homes has increased by EUR 17,500-EUR 20,000 per unit this year, our focus on increasing productivity and efficiencies ensures that we can mitigate against some of these cost pressures. The themes of efficiency, sustainability, and value for customers are all covered in slide 19. This is in the context of currently building new homes to the highest of international standards. With minimum A2 energy ratings, our new homes are NZEB compliant. The use of air to heat pumps means that our new homes are not directly reliant on other fuel sources, such as gas boilers, are instead heated entirely by electricity.
Energy cost volatility is a massive challenge facing everybody today. When we compare our new homes to an average Irish household, which has a C2 energy rating, the energy running costs are significantly lower. This currently amounts to nearly EUR 1,000, and this will increase to nearly EUR 1,500 in October. That gap is only likely to further widen in the short term. The energy efficiency of our homes will enable our customers to somewhat alleviate some of the burden of increasing energy costs over the coming months. Turning to slide 20 and continuing the theme of meaningful cost savings for customers. Michael spoke earlier about the importance of the recent launch of the First Home Scheme.
I thought it would be useful to outline the significant cost benefits accruing to first-time buyers and indeed current renters accruing from the initiative in pounds, shillings, and pence. This is a significant initiative which we believe will provide real ownership solutions for thousands of young families who heretofore have not been able to access a mortgage. As you can see from our starter home example, there is a double benefit for the customer here. Their monthly outgoings, which they are currently paying in rent, reduced by over EUR 1,000 per month, while the payments made go towards an asset that they now own. Moving on to our near-term guidance on slide 21. As Michael outlined, our sales order book demonstrates robust market conditions across our suite of products that serve multiple market segments.
With all of this in mind, we are reiterating the upgraded guidance that we gave to the market in July. This includes a 16.5% core operating margin, a minimum of EUR 115 million of shareholder returns when our 2022 final dividend is announced early next year, on top of the interim dividends which we're declaring today. We also expect to deliver a return on equity of 11% this year, all generated on core house building activity. Slide 22 outlines our medium-term guidance to 2024, which again, we are reiterating today. We expect to deliver between 5,000 and 5,500 of sales completions over the three-year period to 2024. We expect to generate EUR 500 million of operating cash flow over that three-year period.
Again, all this is underpinned by our commitment to continually drive shareholder value through delivering a 15% return on equity metric by 2024. Moving on to sustainability on slide 24, and the significant progress that we continue to make as a business in executing on our sustainability programs and targets. The dominant theme in sustainability today is carbon reduction. In January 2022, we committed to verifying our greenhouse gas emissions reduction target to the Science Based Targets initiative across scope one, two, and three. We have also published our annual sustainability report in line with established frameworks, including TCFD, SASB Standards and GRI. As disclosed in March of this year, we've embedded ESG, social and environmental metrics within our remuneration structure, with longer term targets focused on biodiversity net gain strategy.
Biodiversity net gain for Clonburris, a new town which will deliver 5,500 new homes from 2023, is a significant opportunity and area of focus for us with the establishment of an in-house sustainability forum across all disciplines within Cairn. Thank you for your time this morning, and I'll now hand back to Michael.
Thank you, Shane. Our business is now operating at scale and providing high quality, energy efficient new homes across all product types and tenures.
We have proven that Cairn is battle hardened and can respond to a challenging environment, and we will continue to grow our successful business despite the current headwinds. Thank you all for your time this morning, and I will now hand back to the moderator to start the Q&A.
Thank you. Of course, if you'd like to ask a question via the telephone line, you can do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you choose to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. As a reminder, that's star followed by one now. Our first question comes from Shane Carberry of Goodbody. Shane, your line is open. Please proceed.
Thank you. Good morning all.
Morning, Shane.
How are you, Shane? How are you?
Hey guys. Three from me if I may. Just firstly, if you could give us just a little bit more color on the market opportunity. Michael, you mentioned, you know, in terms of perhaps some of the smaller builders perhaps struggling and look over recent months we've seen kind of a bit of a collapse, I suppose, in the housing element of the construction PMI, but yet you guys are, you know, increasing your width bound substantially. Just a little bit more color around the market opportunity and what makes you guys so confident. Secondly, just on the build cost inflation side of things. Now I think Shane, you mentioned that EUR 17,500-EUR 20,000 per unit. Yes, you guys have managed to keep your kind of starter home price low and gross margin guidance intact.
If you could just give us some of the building blocks around it, that'd be useful. Then lastly, just in terms of capital allocation, obviously kind of guiding for substantial operating cash flow to be generated between 2022 and 2024, and look, actually some of that's kind of accounted for in the cash dividend policy as well as the buyback for this year. Just moving forward, how we should be thinking about, you know, future capital returns versus kind of accretive strategic investments would be useful.
Cool. No problem, Shane. I'll pass over to Shane for the last one. In terms of how the market is responding, I suppose the makeup and structure of the Irish house building industry is very different. Unfortunately, very different to other economies. If we take our nearest neighbor in the U.K., annual output is dominated by a very large number of companies that, to be honest, it's very hard to differentiate between them. They all have very similar structures. They're all exceptionally well capitalized. They've all been around for a long time. They've all scaled massively in the U.K. over the last 10 years, and that's the same in Europe and North America.
Probably 50%-60% of output in the market comes from very large, well capitalized, and well-managed large companies, either private or public. Look, we, you know, everybody knows in Ireland it's very different, and is gonna be for some time. Unfortunately, Ireland's housing supply, the majority, the vast majority, upwards of 90% of it is delivered by small companies that are struggling to grow their equity base, and are likely, in most cases, to be either single site or maybe on no more than one or two different developments. Very challenging for them in the current environment with rising inflation, with the way they're funded, how their work in progress is funded, debt funded in this instance, those costs are increasing.
I think we're seeing that the same circumstances we saw during and just after COVID, where it took quite some time for the Irish market to catch up compared to other international markets. That's the competitive advantage and that's the reason why we felt that this model was a more sustainable model for us when we formed this company in 2015. It just allows us to, if you like, respond more quickly and invest at a time when demand is actually increasing and realizable demand is increasing. The mortgage market is healthy and, as we said today with government initiatives, more of our customers can actually get access to mortgage finance to buy our homes.
For us it's absolutely foot on the gas and keep building at scale and pace. In time the market will catch up, the broader market. There will be a short-term challenge which may see completions actually possibly, you know, stay pretty steady for the next year or two. I don't think it's unlikely to see substantial growth in completions in 2023 over 2022. On BCI, look, we are definitely seeing some signs of I wouldn't say reversal, but certainly improvements in commodities and some materials that we use. In other areas, like with our subcontractors, it often takes some time for people to absorb and catch up on increases.
Materials that are coming from industries that are heavily dependent on energy or indeed may be oil derived, as is the case in some of our products, those commodities are likely to stay at elevated levels for quite some period. It's something that we have to monitor. We're not calling it as the peak, but we're certainly seeing signs that over the next probably six to 12 months, we're unlikely to see substantial increases beyond the current level. We've covered ourselves in these numbers and we've factored in what we see as build cost inflation probably right the way through into middle of next year as we forecast and we're comfortable where our margins are and operating margins in that context.
Maybe just to talk about capital allocation.
I mean, I think, Shane, the message that myself and Michael are very keen to deliver today is it's very much a reiteration on a consistency of the messaging that we've been delivering over the last number of years. It's all underpinned by that 15% return on equity progression. We believe we're proving that by doing. We've had a couple of upgrades this year, earlier on in the year. We will deliver 11% ROE on core house building this year. I think the comfort that we wanna give to the investment community is the fact that we're talking about ROE guidance, and we're gonna generate EUR 500 million of operating cash flow. There's a couple of things implicit in that, obviously, that we're gonna generate a lot of profits.
Clearly, to get to that level of ROE, our profits will have to grow substantially vis-à-vis the unit delivery target that Michael outlined. Within that, obviously, we will be returning substantial capital to shareholders in that context. You know, as we said before, you know, any strategic accretive acquisitions that anybody asks about will be subject to the exact same hurdle rate. It will be time value of money based around IRR methodology, but you know, we would anticipate, as we outlined previously, that the vast majority of that money will be returned to shareholders. I think we like the shape for capital allocation as well. The fact that it's like, if you look at it this year, it's roughly 2/3, 1/3 in terms of buyback.
We think it's very important as well to have a cash yield as well for our very patient investors as well, and that's roughly 1/3 of the base. I think you're getting a nice mix there of buyback with dividends within the mix there.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, Shane.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonny Coubrough of Numis. Jonny, your line is open. Please proceed.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Three from me as well, please. Firstly, please can you give us an update on what dynamics you're currently seeing in the land market, and perhaps a bit of detail on what the strategic acquisitions were in H1. Secondly, I'd be grateful to hear what the efficiency improvements are in the starter home product that you've been able to implement in H1. Thirdly, be grateful to hear your thoughts on what the mix could be between private and state in future years, if the private market does deteriorate or, you know, if you did decide to increase that state element. Thanks very much.
No problem, Jonny. I suppose to answer the last one first, Jonny. The Irish government and you know, as I mentioned earlier, you know, it is a societal issue and a pivotal one at the moment. The area of social affordable housing, both for ownership and rental, has been massively undersupplied in Ireland, in the last number of years. People who have been displaced by that tragic situation in Eastern Europe have also entered our country, and we've supported those people, which has again put more pressure on government, on housing provision.
Cairn Homes as a company of scale, it's absolutely appropriate that we carry our weight and increase the volume of social affordable homes that we deliver, and more importantly, that we deliver them on our land. That's both good for our land, and it's good for our shareholders. We're all about solutions and bringing solutions to the state, and we have delivered homes across a number of platforms and to various state agencies. It's currently about 25% of our market. It will probably remain at that level and could grow marginally over the coming years, but that's still a very substantial portion of our output, particularly when you consider we have delivered 3,800 homes in the next two years. The land market is fairly benign.
Shane, why don't you come in on the second question? You know, we haven't seen a high level of transactions. From a Cairn perspective, we have a pretty large land bank and as everybody knows, and I hope our shareholders know, our primary focus is on monetizing and building as many homes as possible on that land bank, and to reduce its size, to make both our balance sheet more efficient, and to deliver strong returns for our shareholders. 'Cause the vast majority of the land that we're building on was well bought in 2015 and 2016 when most of the land that was owned by institutional owners in Ireland was traded, and Cairn took advantage there. I think that can be seen obviously in the type of margins that we're generating.
It is interesting, though, over the last number of years that the land elements of our overall ASP is smaller. You know, as the cost of building homes has increased through regulation, very necessary regulation, through energy efficiencies and through the increased cost of labor and materials recently, it's equally important that we are efficient as a business and we look at our productivity and efficiencies, which is why we discussed a lot of that today. A pretty benign land market, and it's probably fair to say that land that already has planning permission and is fully consented is at a significant premium and is expensive to buy, probably reflecting the current difficulties within the Irish planning system.
Yeah.
On the land piece, we spent EUR 23 million in the first half of the year, and that was on a portfolio of sites that we'd already flagged largely. Limerick, Navan, Shankill, Leixlip, they're all shovel-ready sites. We're already active on most of those sites already, so that kind of plays, Jonny, I guess, to the dynamic we already spoke about. That anything that we do acquire will be through that ROE lens in terms of quick asset turn sites. That's where that piece was for the first half. I think the other question was around efficiencies, Jonny. Is that correct?
Yeah. That's right.
I suppose, you know, you hope, and I think we do get smarter and get better as we scale, particularly if we're smart around design and if we own the value creation opportunity right from the outset. For us, it's about not just acquiring land in the right location, it's about designing homes right from scratch that not just we are used to and good at building, but our subcontractor base and the alignment of our supply chain. That's further enhanced then by advances in off-site manufacturing, obviously modern methods of construction, faster assembly, with more production off-site. That's a drive for us and the entire industry. Shane also talked about our scale and our purchasing power. I touched on standardization, Jonny, as well in the presentation.
That's extremely important. If our homes are repetitive, and we're largely using the same materials and methodology and designs, that just streamlines our business and productivity. I think we have proven that within Ireland, we're an extremely efficient business. We're looking at lean, you know, working and adopting lean construction principles. During the COVID period, we used that time to bring in a lot of automation into our processes on site. We're continuing that drive, production controls. It's a very, very broad area of just trying to knowledge capture, Jonny, and bring those learnings right through our business and our production.
That's all very clear. Thanks very much.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to submit a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. That's star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Colin Sheridan of Davy. Colin, your line is open. Please proceed.
Thank you, good morning, guys, and congratulations on the results.
Thanks, Colin.
Three from me as well if I can. First one's just a, I guess, a follow-up on Jonny's question in relation to the social completions. Obviously a pretty large number relative to, say, the Part V that you would have had to build on the site. I mean, I'm just wondering at what point, you know, and I'm really concentrating on the completions over and above Part V's, at what point are local authorities or other agencies stepping in to buy these homes off you? Are they approaching you once you've got planning or is it much later along the line?
I suppose what kind of opportunity does that have in the next few years to continue at that sort of levels and be a significant alternate exit if required for Cairn? Then just on pricing, I mean, you're clearly very well set up for 2022 with your guidance. I suppose nobody really knows what's gonna happen to 2023, but I'm just thinking about how long your order book is at this point in time and how much visibility you might have and whether that has given you some confidence that sort of upward momentum in pricing will at very least continue into early 2023, if just in relation to house price inflation. Then finally, maybe one on the planning system.
I mean, it's obviously something that's a challenge everywhere, but it's something you pointed to being a real challenge in Ireland earlier in the year. Clearly Cairn's in a very enviable position in relation to how well set up you are for the next few years. Has LRD maybe made things easier or do you think it's just gonna be as difficult as it always has been in relation to the planning system? Thanks.
In reverse, Colin, I think, yeah, planning, look, irrespective of the system, SHD, LRD, direct to local authority for smaller applications, your success rate through the planning system is more likely to be impacted by the quality of your application and the suitability of your application. That's a skill set that, you know, companies have to develop over time. Understanding local needs, local authority needs, meeting the standards required in terms of regulation, being compliant in as much as you can with the requirements of the National Development Plan and local authority plans, and all of those things assist. I think what we've proven is that that gives us a really high conversion rate.
For us, a high conversion rate means higher sales and higher output, because we don't sit on planning applications. We get building on them straight away. The AG is currently Attorney General, working through legislative changes, as you obviously all know. I think the LRD system hopefully will take the more positive aspects of SHD, and ensure that those things still work. We started our planning journey to bring what was a pretty large land bank back through the planning system to update it, bring it up to current standards, make it more appropriate for today's market. We started that journey five years ago. Thankfully we have now massively de-risked our land bank.
Even if you consider Clonburris, our largest site, you know, you could argue almost a third now of our land bank, it's in a Strategic Development Zone. Cairn has proven previously that building in strategic development zones is easier, because we are much more aligned with the strategy that has already been adopted by the local authority for that development zone, and that's been proven in places like Hanover Quay, in Adamstown, where we delivered over 1,100 homes in a very short period, and we're out of there now. We will exit this year, and also currently in Cherrywood. Look, it's a tough environment in planning. Similar challenges exist in other countries.
We just have to be the best in the market at navigating those, and to some extent get the earliest start, which has been one of our key advantages because as I said, we were able to start working on a lot of these schemes a number of years ago. Social affordable completions. Look, I, you know, the state, even pre the current inflationary environment, the type of costs in the public domain that state needs to absorb to build social affordable housing on their own land are high. That's understandable because of the methodology and the way that those homes have to be procured.
Absolutely appropriate that the state continues to build at scale on state land, and initiatives like the Land Development Agency, I believe will be a very positive step to achieving those aims. Parallel solutions are needed, and the private sector has to carry its weight. A company like Cairn can operate at scale and pace and probably, in fact, do deliver better value for the state, in my opinion, because we are achieving homes today. If you take the 520 homes we'll deliver this year, that's 2,000 people living in Cairn Homes just delivered this year.
I suppose our advantages is speed, pace, scale and value for the state, and critically solutions on our own land, which leads to appropriate mixed tenure developments, and developments which are balanced and sustainable. That's also from our perspective very important. In relation to pricing in the order book, sorry Shane, feel free to come in on any of these points. Look, we have to be clearly focused on trying to bring pricing, particularly in our starter homes and in the social and affordable area that represents value for the customers.
Across all cohorts, we try to bring value, but obviously the pressure on first time buyers is greater, and that's why we're really pleased that we've been able to keep those price points very competitive, and grow the order book that you mentioned to the size it is today, and it will continue to grow. The demand we've seen in the last couple of weeks has been extraordinary. Often after a summer recess, I certainly hold my breath a little bit and wonder, you know, you always do, will the market continue as it was in the previous May, or April or June? We've had launches, substantial number of launches over the last number of weekends, and the level of demand we're feeling is pretty extraordinary.
I think we have currently today in excess of 25,000 live inquiries across all of our developments. None of that surprises us really. Relieved but not surprised was how it felt in the last number of weeks. The demand will remain strong, and our margins are growing, and we'd like to continue to see progression. In the current environment, I think you'd agree, Colin, the last thing we should be doing is forecasting increased margins because it is a challenging environment. As much as we can, we want to absorb those cost increases, particularly in the starter home sector, as opposed to passing them on to customers.
I think that covers it, Mike.
Sorry, Colin?
Sorry. That's, yeah, very sensible. Thanks for those.
Thank you. As another reminder, if you wish to submit a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. We currently have no further questions, so I'll hand back over to the team for any closing remarks.
Nope. Thank you. Look forward to seeing many of you in person, over the next few days and thank you for your time this morning. Appreciate it. Thank you.