Okay. Morning, everyone, and many thanks for coming down to Windsor to join us this morning. Bill and I are looking forward to our capital markets event today, sharing some more detail on the strategic priorities we touched upon at the results, and introducing some other members of the leadership team that are going to help execute some very exciting plans, all focused on delivering long-term sustainable shareholder value. If I can take this slide on forward-looking statements as read. Good, thank you. Okay, a quick run through the content of today's presentation and our plans for the event more generally. As I said, Bill and I will start by talking through where Crest Nicholson is today, what we see the future opportunities, and the changes and improvements we need to make in the business to capitalize on those opportunities.
Ultimately, we want you to leave today with a clear understanding of what our ambitions are for Crest Nicholson and how that will flow through into delivering value for shareholders. After that, we look forward to introducing some colleagues: our recently promoted Group Managing Director, Mark Foyle, who will talk briefly on what to expect on our site visit to Windsor Gate today; our Group Sales and Marketing Director, Vicky Cullen, who will provide a little more color on the sales and marketing initiatives that I will share with you; and Charlie Joseph, who is the Managing Director of our Southwest division and soon moving to the same position in our Southern division. She is going to talk about her experiences with the changes implemented to date and how her team are reacting to these changes.
After a break, we'll depart on a short trip to Windsor Gate so you can see firsthand how some of these initiatives we talk about today are being introduced and implemented. Okay. We're going to go into some detail at times today, which I think is important for you to hear about. However, when we take a step back, there are five points that really underpin everything and why we think the Crest investment case is a compelling one. We know that there is demand for housing, and from my discussions with the Labour government, and as you saw in the very recent planning and infrastructure bill, I think that they want to make some positive changes to help our industry build the houses which the country needs. It won't be easy, and the target is a challenging one, but we will play our part in that.
Having spent considerable time reviewing the market opportunities since joining as CEO, it is clear to me that the best way forward is to properly focus on the mid-premium segment in the housing market. The dynamics of that segment are very attractive and robust. We obviously need to improve some of the ways in which we operate to meet the expectations of the customers in this segment, but we have already seen some really encouraging signs following the actions taken and now in place. Ultimately, this is about delivering sustainable returns for our shareholders. We believe this is best achieved through a strategy that focuses on value growth alongside disciplined volume growth, but aligned to a sharp focus on our return on capital. You will hear more about how we intend to deliver that over the coming slides.
Thinking about Crest Nicholson itself, there are strong foundations to build upon. We have an excellent short-term and long-term strategic land bank, a strong balance sheet, and a well-regarded brand. In order to deliver a successful strategy, though, we also need a strong and capable leadership team, all aligned to the same strategy. That leadership team is now in place. We also have many excellent people who have started to really embrace the changes that Crest needs to make. There's a lot to build upon. I think the evolution of the housing market over the last decade provides some useful context for the strategic pillars set out today. Clearly, the period from 2013 to 2020 was a good time for the industry. We had low interest rates and government support in the form of Help to Buy underpinning demand and prices, and actually relatively modest build cost inflation to navigate.
The world then changed dramatically from 2020 through to today. As you'll all recall, there was real macro instability and headwinds facing both the overall U.K. economy and then our industry within that. At the macro level, we had COVID, the cost of living crisis, inflation, and interest rates increasing. Thinking about our industry alongside that backdrop, we saw Help to Buy removed and material new costs to our business, including, of course, fire remediation. I know this period was a real challenge for the industry and indeed for any management team to navigate. Looking here in 2025, there is still some macro instability, in part from geopolitical uncertainty, and we do have a higher regulatory cost base to operate than we did in the past. Equally, though, there is no doubt that as a country we need more homes.
There is no doubt also that the government is committed to supporting that industry. I'm really encouraged by the Prime Minister's language around beating the blockers. Against that backdrop, we can see a clear and differential approach and opportunity for Crest and how we might start to mark our own progress against the national housebuilding targets which we have set out. The government has obviously set out a very ambitious target of delivering 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament, which put simply equates to 300,000 homes each year. Set against the record of housing delivery over the last decade or so, it certainly seems ambitious. The longer we put off the problem surrounding housing delivery, the more extreme the problem will become. On the right of the slide, you can see some of the public commitments on the topic.
What I will say from the private discussions I've had with ministers is that public rhetoric is very consistent with what they are saying behind the scenes. Understanding and resolving the blockers within the planning system is a key challenge for the Labour government. Again, we are seeing some helpful actions by the government, but clearly there's still more to be done. Obviously, any simplification or acceleration within the system is good for Crest Nicholson to enable us to build the right number of homes in the right parts of the country and with our transformation plans embedded in the business, importantly at the right margin and rate of returns. We wanted to touch upon the previous Crest Nicholson strategy, which was set out in 2019 and which was described as multi-channel.
It is important context because it sets out what Bill and I inherited and what we need to change. In short, the focus in that multi-channel strategy was for more and larger sites, really quite aggressively driving down build costs through design, material, and specification adjustments, and then selling across different market segments with different customer types, all with different needs and expectations. Whilst it is always easy to comment with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear from our results that this strategy just has not worked as planned, but for many reasons. There are both external and internal factors that have contributed to our performance over the years, some within our control and some not. I have listed out on the slide here some particular issues as a result of these external and internal factors.
For a housebuilder of the scale and size of Crest, the scale of macro instability over the recent past has meant that the business has really suffered from the pressures associated with the rising cost of capital, coupled with the declining margin on PRS housing. We were competing in a highly commoditized market against housebuilders and contractors with considerably better economies of scale than Crest. In addition to that, of course, the balance sheet of the business was further impacted by the fire remediation costs, an area we have since provided more clarity on at the recent prelims. Alongside that, though, there were some decisions which we have reversed. It was clear that the build quality and the sound specifications that Crest was working toward just did not reflect the Crest brand or what customers would expect when buying a Crest home.
Our customers believe that we were a mid-premium brand, but we were not acting or operating like a mid-premium brand. We need and are changing that quickly.
As we spent time thinking the best way to take Crest forward, it was quickly apparent that developments in the PRS market have created significant operational and financial challenges for a housebuilder with the scale and operations of Crest. The chart on the left here has some key data points to illustrate this. You can see with the solid brown line how open market house prices have changed since 2019. Obviously, though, with a PRS contract, you set a fixed price with a guaranteed but discounted income, which is the dotted blue line. However, the builder takes the build cost inflation risk, which you can see with the solid green line at the bottom.
With unprecedented build cost inflation through 2021, 2022, and 2023, margins have been squeezed significantly. Furthermore, PRS investors have become ever more sophisticated in their procurement. For a housebuilder with Crest scale, it's very challenging to manage those PRS contracts efficiently and, as a result, drive any margin from those homes. As we look to the future, we've set out here an illustration on how our margins can be impacted. The donut on the left is where Crest is today with the multi-channel strategy. Something like 60% of our volume, though sold on the open market, is margin accretive, with approximately 40% of the volume sold at a discount to the affordable and PRS channels. The central and right-hand donuts show how this could develop going forward. You can see that we expect the affordable volume share to grow based on government policy.
In the central donut, with increased affordable, but with an expected reduction in value to open market pricing due to tenure changes and just maintaining the level of PRS with higher discounts, we would be facing a lower proportion of open market sales and margin compression. On the right-hand side, we can maintain the share of private development, and whilst volume growth is moderated, we can maintain and expand the gross margin. What we intend to do is limit the new PRS contracts, go through the run-off of the current PRS, which will take a couple of years, and then focus on private development at higher margin, which will lead to better financial performance and better returns for our shareholders. There is one final retrospective slide that we want to run through before we talk about the future and what we are going to do to take the business forward.
This analysis that we've undertaken has enabled us to really understand where the margin leakage issues have been. It's important to know that this bridge reflects the actual experience of the last few years, from pre-commencement through to handing over the keys to the customer and into warranty, rather than affecting any of the future land which is yet to be drawn down. The first green bar goes back to what we've said previously about the mix of house types that we've been building. Historically, the approach was to try and build as many units as quickly as possible, and in doing so, having more affordable housing where the revenue can be recognized quickly but at a lower price point. You can then see the impact by the discounting on open market volume that was used to sell more houses.
Our old commission approach was volume-led rather than having an approach aligned with sustainable financial interests about margin and return on capital, with a product which was not as good as it should have been and that did not reflect mid-premium branding. In a difficult market and with salespeople motivated by volume, we just get discounts to hit targets. This was then further exacerbated by bulk release of houses where they were not being sold on the private market and so were sold through PRS in quite big numbers. Again, the objective was volume over margin. Finally, the biggest contributor to the margin leakage was build cost.
This is in two components, but we've shown the combined impact because it's quite subjective in some cases as to what is build cost inflation in the market and what is self-inflicted from poor processes, building schemes that are no longer part of our strategy, such as Farnham, and suboptimal procurement. However, what this chart does show is both why Crest margins aren't where they should be and that some of this was self-inflicted and is therefore addressable. Later on, we'll give you a view on the levers that we can pull to move the gross margin back to where it should be.
In order to deliver a new strategy for delivery of the mid-premium home, it is important that we look internally to what strengths we have.
Prior to my time here, I always felt that the Crest Nicholson brand was historically aspirational, and since joining, supported by external research, I firmly believe that we do have a very strong brand. Our land bank is of a significant size and well located in areas that we can capitalize on our brand strength. It is true that this large land bank is too large for the size of the company in certain areas, but importantly, this offers a number of opportunities for us also. I mentioned earlier that we have an experienced leadership team in place now that reflects the needs of the business in order to deliver the ambition that we are setting out today. Importantly, our people are engaged and motivated to change the fortunes of Crest Nicholson. They are taking pride in what they're being asked to deliver.
We are being clear in all of our communications across the business, focusing at all times on the key strategic pillars as we seek to build a culture of excellence. This, combined with a clear and focused plan to deliver this strategy, will in turn deliver sustainable returns, all of which we hope to be able to show you in the coming slides. I know many of you have followed the housing industry for a long time and cover some of our peers or maybe shareholders in other housebuilders. I did think it was worth quickly setting out how I view the various segments of the market, though, because it helps inform why we are going to dedicate ourselves to the mid-premium segment.
There is always some overlap, of course, with housebuilders perhaps covering a couple of the segments, but broadly, there are companies that focus on affordable and PRS, then large players who dominate the more price-focused entry-level segment. At the premium end, there are notably few scale developers, then with some very small developers. There is the mid-premium segment. We think this is an attractive segment for a number of reasons and one which does not have the same competitive density as some of the other segments. There are a number of reasons why we think this is an attractive demographic for us to focus on and why we are particularly really well placed to do that. We have talked about our brand a few times now, and I will come on to where our land bank is based shortly.
Overall, you would characterize the demographic as having above average income and are generally, but not entirely, second or third-time buyers, along with downsizers. This means that the loan-to-value ratio is lower within having more equity. It is an attractive customer base, and so we are going to have a strategy which ensures we have the product that these customers want to buy. That is about site design, house type design, build quality, build specification, and critically, the overall customer experience. With the locations and shape of our land bank and by reducing our focus on the PRS market and by keeping our affordable home percentages in line with the regulatory requirements, we calculate that this is the best way to deliver good, sustainable returns for our shareholders and build great homes for our customers.
When analyzing all the data and information to help formulate the right strategy for Crest and seeing that a mid-premium approach is clearly the right one, one of the pieces of analysis was looking at housing transactions in areas we develop. This page shows that there are over 200,000 transactions, both new and second-hand, with prices over GBP 300,000 in our five divisions. Compared to the overall market, Crest sales were less than 1% of all these housing transactions. This creates an opportunity for Crest to build on its brand, utilize its land, and create an opportunity for a market share over the medium term, representing circa 10% of the new build transactions in this segment. Of course, identifying the market share opportunity is one thing. You also need to know that you're able to meet it by taking a more evidence-based approach to strategy formulation.
I'm a big believer in market research, and we have done more internal customer surveys since I've started to understand what is expected. The conclusions from this research validate what we suspected. We spoke to a good number of customers, and the bars here set out what they care about. The scores are out of seven. You can see that critically, the location is vital. We were in a good place on that, as I'll come on to. The other two key priorities are the build specification and build quality. You see today how we are going to go about making that reflective of our mid-premium brand and the design of the house itself as we are redesigning our house types accordingly.
Underpinning all of that are a number of other criteria, and for me personally, I think they're all largely captured under the theme of customer service or customer journey. Again, we're going to talk to you through some of the initiatives a bit later today. I talked a little bit previously about why the mid-premium segment is attractive to us in terms of the buyer profile. I think it is also worth looking at the comparative performance of this segment versus the broader housing market. This page shows how the performance of other segments has compared to Crest performance with its multi-channel strategy.
By indexing all data back to 2018, you can see that coming out of COVID and going through all the turbulence of the mini-budget, and then with the increasing interest rate environment, the number of completions by the top three mid-premium housebuilders notably outperformed the broader market. Those buyers have greater assets and find it easier to get mortgages. They're more likely to have cash and lower loan-to-value ratios. They're also less likely to be first-time buyers. This means that the demand was very resilient despite the broader macro turbulence. I think that there were two dynamics to the disappointing Crest performance. Some of it was obviously external, as I explained earlier, but I also think this proves that when you're subscale and focused on just volume, then you are going to find things very difficult. Crest do not want to find themselves in that position again.
What does the mid-premium segment look like with regard to the competitive landscape? I touched upon earlier the scope for market share growth, and I think this reiterates that point very clearly. Within this segment itself, we can be one of the largest scaled independent players. We have an established brand already aligned to mid-premium. Our site locations are favorable, and with improving build quality and product offering, we believe we can take about 10% market share. It's a space to grow. We've spent some time talking about the merits of focusing on the mid-premium segment, why it is attractive through the cycle, why they're good customers to target, and what those customers prioritize before buying a home. We flagged that location was absolutely critical, but of course, to be a mid-premium housebuilder, you need the right land in the right places.
This chart shows where our short-term land bank is located and how much higher the average incomes in those locations are versus the regional average income. For example, you can see that in Yorkshire Midlands, our short-term land bank is located where the average income is 17% higher than the average income for that region. Likewise, with our Eastern land bank, it is 13% and so on and so forth. In short, we have the right land bank with regard to location for our mid-premium strategy. We know that the potential buyers are there with the ability to buy our homes.
Over the next couple of slides, I'll take you through some more color on the land bank, which is a major asset for Crest Nicholson, albeit we need to make some changes regarding our strategy for it. We have two bars on this chart.
Overall, there are approximately 14,000 plots in the short-term land bank. The bar on the left shows you the margins. We have 40% of the units with an embedded margin over 25%. Just under a third of our plots are at margins under 20%, and within that, approximately 500 plots are at margins of under 10%, which will substantially be sold between now and FY2027. On the right, you can see the size of the different sites. When we spoke to you at the prelims, we touched upon the importance of having sites which are in the right location and are of the right size for a housebuilder of the scale of Crest Nicholson. Large sites tend to have a tendency to absorb a lot of working capital with a high land payment and generally require more infrastructure work and Section 106 commitments.
If you're building around 2,000 homes a year and maybe 50-60 a year on a site, then we do not need to have our cash tied up on dormant parts of a larger development. This bar shows you that we have about 25% of our units on sites over 500. This is a really important opportunity for us because we can sell either the whole or part of these sites to free up cash to invest in smaller land for outlook growth and to meet our remediation obligations. This slide gives you some more insight into the location of our land. As well as 14,000 short-term plots, the strategic land bank has approximately 18,000 plots for an aggregate of 32,000 plots.
The darker the shading on the map, the higher the average household income is in that region, with the darkest color showing areas where the household income is greater than GBP 55,000. We've then overlaid the locations of the land bank. Here, the green dots show the locations of the short-term plots, and the orange dots represent the locations of the strategic land. As you can see, almost all of the strategic land and the bulk of the short-term land is in regions well suited to a mid-premium strategy with very few outliers. We're targeting each division to deliver between 400 and 500 homes a year. This strikes the balance between having enough volume to support the central cost of the division, but also means that we can keep control of standards and quality, which is critical for a mid-premium player.
Moving then to how the land is split between the different divisions, here we have laid out the number of plots in the short-term land bank by division. At a group level, the average forward cover is seven years, and you can see the position for each of the divisions. Chiltern is a little lighter than we would ideally like, but being in the middle of our regions could be augmented with land from other regions. Conversely, the other divisions are well supplied, and this provides confidence that any land we do sell will not lead to new problems of creating subscale divisions. In summary on this section, we believe that the mid-premium segment is attractive for Crest Nicholson because it is large scale in Crest regions. It is an attractive customer base of discerning and affluent families.
It has demonstrated its more resilience to the macro cycle and is a fragmented market with few large scale players.
Thank you. Bill and I have today set out where the opportunity in the U.K. housing market to deliver good returns for our shareholders and what strategists at Crest Nicholson need to deliver that. This section is going to build upon some of the comments we've already made about how we're going to get there. Simply and clearly, though, there are four strategic pillars which we'll report back on going forward: building exceptional quality homes efficiently, delivering outstanding customer service, both of which need to be underpinned by operational and commercial excellence, and making sure we optimize the land portfolio. We will show the potential to do that by now going into a bit more detail on each of those pillars.
Our ambition is to deliver strong value growth alongside disciplined volume growth. It is very clear that we need to improve our design and specifications to reflect our mid-premium brand. We know from our legacy four-star rating that it has not always been good enough. It is important, though, that we approach this with discipline and rigor because we need to maximize the value we get from this process and these changes. We carried out some customer research when I started, which was useful, but we are supplementing that data with more extensive research to really understand the granularity of the key preferences and needs of our potential buyers.
Alongside that, with regard to the design side of things, it is important that we need to ensure that our new house type designs are optimized for our target customer, but also that they plot efficiently on new sites to ensure we maximize the value and margin potential. Our room sizes need to work and reflect modern-day living. This will mean an evolution to our current range in the short term, with a new house type range being introduced in the medium term. We have some initiatives around build and material quality, which will reduce future warranty claims and reduce future repair costs. Simple items such as bath panels that were not to the required standards, external front door frame width, staircase designs, and appliance specifications. This obviously has two benefits.
It aligns the overall customer experience to what they would expect with a mid-premium housebuilder, and it reduces the costs we incur in fixing our mistakes. It also provides a home that the customer knows from day one will not need to be amended or added to for some years ahead. For example, the kitchens and bathrooms are well designed and specified. Features such as showers above baths are fitted as standard, and the external materials used will provide long-lasting curb appeal and protect future values. With regards to specifications, it's about raising the minimum base level at which we are fitting out the houses. The cost associated with the recent specification increases were controlled efficiently, centrally, but have created value. We will then shortly have a broader, more premium range of customer upgrade options, again enhancing value.
This will give our customers the options they would expect and our salespeople a better quality product to sell, and certainly they will have the confidence in what they are working with. Again, though, the point is that this will be done in a disciplined and rigorous way to ensure we maximize the value from the process rather than things being done speculatively. Alongside all the work which I talked about on the previous slides, we then have to make sure that the build quality on each site is of the right standard. There is no point doing all the design work and then falling short with build quality. We have five initiatives to deliver this. The first is enhancing the standardization of the build process and having better staff training. This will lead to fewer mistakes and a more efficient and smooth build process.
We have then refocused and strengthened both the internal quality team and our external independent quality review processes. These both ensure that the build of each home is being properly checked at the important stages to ensure that the standards are being maintained. Any possible issues are caught quickly and lessons learnt. Alongside these initiatives, we have carried out a similar reform of our quality and customer service team. I frequently talked about the critical importance of making the entire customer journey a positive experience, and we can now build on the levels of service provided to meet customer expectations. Finally, I've talked a lot at the results about how we reformed the fire remediation team, bringing the work under one centralized function with a dedicated lead.
Previously, the Crest response to the fire remediation challenges were done at the divisional level, and this absorbed a lot of time and effort when I want those divisions focused on building great homes for our customers. They can now focus on doing just that. It is easy to talk in theory and in hypotheticals, but we are trying to get across the direction of travel that we are taking Crest. Here is a case study which shows what is possible to achieve. The site is in Solihull near Birmingham. In this instance, you can see that the customer review scores in 2023 were frankly not very good. With the appropriate actions and focus we have taken, you can see that the scores improved significantly in 2024.
To be an HBF-recognized five-star housebuilder, last year we needed a 90% score or above on the question, "Would you recommend a friend?" With this particular site, you can see we achieved a score of 100% in 2024 compared to 83% in 2023, highlighted by the gold bar on the table. The improvement was delivered by a number of different things. Obviously, you need the hard work and dedication of the team, and they have really engaged everything that we were trying to do. You can also see with the bullets on the left some of the practical examples of the actions I've talked through in the prior slide, and that these real practical actions can make a big impact. Following up on the Solihull case study, I wanted to share some more of the early results we have seen from some of the actions we have taken so far.
A lot of the change is going to be about making sure we have the right culture, about instilling a build right first time culture that is so much more efficient than going back fixing problems. One of the initiatives which will be very useful is the structured external review process, which monitors reportable items and analyzes defects to ensure we do improve our standards. We have the management information tools in place now to follow this properly on a real-time or daily basis. We've talked about having the appropriate materials previously and the benefit of having strengthened inspection processes and stricter quality control. Something which we need to be stronger and firmer on is dealing with our subcontractors. I think we can be smarter at working out who we really want to partner with and then holding them to account to meet our quality standards.
All of this contributes to achieving the five-star status that we need as a mid-premium housebuilder. However, in this context, I'm very pleased with our current 2024 HBF customer care metric for the year ending 2024 at 95%, comfortably above the five-star threshold. The final confirmation of our year-end position is due to be formally announced next week by the HBF. On the right, you can see more evidence of how our action plan can deliver tangible results. The NHBC came out and checked the properties, and if you aren't aware, a reportable item is when there is something not consistent with the required technical standards. You can see that already we have had a material impact on the number of reportable items, with the group performance reducing from 0.36 down to 0.28, which compares well with our peers. We have added the Eastern. Thank you.
We have added the Eastern division data because I know that some of you are aware of the historical issues we've had with that division. This has required more extensive reform and change, including a new management team. The uptick in performance with regard to reportable items, though, has been excellent, down 42% to 0.19. Sustainability is going to play an important part of Crest Nicholson's future. We have some driving principles which will then inform some of the actions and initiatives that we take. We have our net zero by 2045 target. We are committed to biodiversity. We are always thinking about how we can reduce waste, and we're always in touch with our stakeholders to understand best practice. For example, we work with the Supply Chain Sustainability School and Future Home Sub to drive sustainability best practice.
Thinking about what that all means at the site level, I thought it worth running through the things that we have done on our site here in Windsor. Windsor is a zero-carbon ready development. There is no gas on site, and homes are fitted with air source heat pumps. The emissions associated with the use of the homes are significantly lower than the current building regulations require. The homes are fitted with EV charging points and will be zero-carbon once the electric grid has been decarbonized. All of these initiatives support our transition to the future home standard. Looking beyond the homes themselves, you'll see that when we get there, there are solar-powered streetlights and bollards incorporated throughout the development, helping reduce emissions and electricity costs. You'll see these in the street scene and bollards next to the sustainable drainage system at the front of the site.
With regard to biodiversity and supporting nature, the sites and houses have been designed to retain most boundary hedgerows and tree lines. We have bat and bird bricks incorporated into the homes alongside bird boxes within the retained trees. The site is going to have a wild meadow and hedgehog highways. I've talked before about building homes and communities, and the overall environment where people live is important as the home itself. Within this development, we will incorporate two play areas, a trim trail, and some pocket allotments, which people can use to grow fruit and vegetables. Finally, there's a sustainable drainage system to reduce flood risk and support biodiversity. As you'll see shortly, the development is really starting to take shape. I think it's important to remember that purchasing a house is probably the biggest financial transaction someone will ever make.
With our customers, we need to make the overall experience as smooth as possible for them, and we want customers to be excited when moving into their new homes. I talked about this a little at the results, and Vicky will talk through some of the actions we have taken and future initiatives we are planning to carry out prior to us going on to our development at Windsor. I also talked previously that we had PRS sales, obviously affordable, and then open market. I think this lack of focus made things difficult for the salespeople who were targeted on volume and did not have confidence in the product they were selling. That led to a self-fulfilling downward spiral. We are changing the entire process. It is going to be led by Vicky and also Jason Roberts, who is our new Group Customer Operations Director.
Jason spent much of his career at large PLC retailers where he was responsible for customer care, and obviously, the volumes of customers he was dealing with were really significant. It's going to be really helpful to bring that objective and fresh perspective to the team. The slide does show you the journey that customer goes through and the actions that we have either started to take or are going to take so that it reflects our mid-premium brand and is something customers find positive. We know there has been a gap between our customer messaging and the mid-premium segment. As such, we are redesigning the website to make that a much more powerful tool for us, coupled with a targeted advertising scheme all aligned to the brand values. When potential customers come on site, everything that they see and feel also needs to represent the mid-premium brand.
Our sales offices are newly designed. Our show homes will meet minimum design standards, all again referencing back to the mid-premium brand. Alongside that, historically, we just did not use technology and customer data nearly as much as we should do to help us follow up with people. We have brought in some systems and practices to change that. We are changing the disciplines and behaviors on pricing and negotiation. Critically, we need to make sure that the salespeople have the right quality of customer options to give them the confidence that they are selling a higher quality product. We need to end this culture of just trying to sell the house whatever the price to hit a volume number. Of course, once that is all agreed, we need to make the completion process a smooth and enjoyable one.
People should look forward to moving into a new home, and we want them to tell their friends and family that they had a positive experience. This means having excellent post-completion care with us checking in with the customer to make sure that everything is as they would expect it to be. The final stage will be a key focus for Jason. On the previous slide, you've seen a reference to the sales and training and coaching that we have been running. We have done a huge amount of work in this area, and I've been encouraged by the response of the sales teams and the impact that it has already had on performance. That training and coaching has had a number of elements to it, and as part of that, we have changed the commission structure.
I think it's really important that the commission paid to the salespeople is aligned with our business ambitions and financial priorities, profit and return on capital. Another part of that training has been clarity on what salespeople can do with regard to discounting and what sales behavior we expect. They're selling a mid-premium product, and they need to have pride in that and value it accordingly. We will back them in that conviction with giving them what they need and rewarding the right behaviors. The bar chart on the left shows a significant improvement in net achieved prices versus book value. However, just as importantly, the line chart on the right shows that this isn't at the cost of our sales rate and that this has also been increasing as the months have gone by. This is just the start.
There is a lot more we need to make sure that the salespeople have what they need to sell the mid-premium product, but it shows what we can deliver in a very short period of time.
Whilst I'm sure that at a point in time we'd a great deal on consolidating the volume into that supplier, over time, this has given us less flexibility and made it harder to get a regular level of competitiveness into the procurement process. We've now changed that and have three suppliers going forward. On systems, the group changed its ERP to COINS during 2022 and 2023. Whilst this is the standard ERP for U.K. housebuilders, and the group rightly did not try to customize the product, it has not been made with sufficient allowance for configuration and report writing to ensure that the right level of granular management information is available. The team are making good strides to improve this visibility.
An enhanced program of new governance and improved MI is being rolled out and upgraded every two months so that we can leverage regular incremental improvements rather than wait longer for a big bang upgrade. This now provides us with more granular WIP reporting and highlights where build programs are getting out of sync with sales. Better governance requires central sign-off from Mark, our Group MD, and Joe, the Commercial Director, on commencing WIP on new phases. We're improving our payment controls. It hasn't always been apparent that we've received the goods or services procured when we make payment, and that is being rectified. Additionally, we've been paying up to 40% of our suppliers early and then a smaller but significant number of suppliers more than 10 days late.
To maintain appropriate subcontractor relationships, we obviously need to be a reliable customer for them and clearly getting the benefits of terms that we've negotiated. We're also looking at how we can appropriately leverage technology to increase site efficiency. As an example, all of our site access and certification process is conducted manually and could be done online by subcontractors before they attend site. Alongside commercial best practices, we should be more efficient as an operator. We've talked about how the Yorkshire business was established. We now have a small team on the ground who are doing a great job growing the region, but they're now going to be fully supported in the back office by the Midlands team, which will improve efficiency and capability.
We've spent some time looking at our operating model and can see some significant opportunities from standardizing the model for site management and site support, depending on the fluctuations in complexity and scale of the build program. One of the areas where we needed to be much better was the use of IT to make better decisions, and I'll give you an example here. Previously, we didn't have daily visibility on sales margins and sales rates. We didn't have the level of visibility I would expect on part exchange costs, including interest charges. We're changing all of that with the better use of the system, and we've already done a lot of improvements here, which help us to run the business more efficiently and better every day. There is still a lot to do.
None of this is individually difficult, but the volume of change required is going to be onerous on the business. Overall, we're working to bring down our overhead costs from 9% to 7% of revenue, which would be in line with the overhead ratio for a medium-sized housebuilder. The land bank, both short-term and strategic, is a big asset for Crest, but also a big opportunity. We have some excellent land, albeit it is also an area where I think we need to take some action. The land buying process was quite decentralized and focused on scale. As I touched upon at the results earlier today, it meant that there were some sites which do not seem to fit into an overall coherent land strategy for a housebuilder the size of Crest.
We now control this process much more closely from the center with new governance around what we are investing in. We're going to have greater and more consistent expectations around the type of land we are buying and where we're buying it. A lot of this goes back to being focused on one source of customer and making sure that the land we effectively manage across the five divisions. We're also looking to increase the number of outlets we have, prioritizing the development of smaller sites in sought-after locations to enhance return on investment we're making. Site selection is multi-dimensional, but our analysis here is focusing on scale and distance from the office of the existing short-term land bank. On scale, we've talked before about the challenges of the large sites. We've also undertaken analysis of our margins based on distance from the nearest office.
What we've identified is that when a site is over 80-90 minutes away from the office, then the levels of control really drop. The site gets less oversight and review than those closer to the office. More mistakes get made, and this has a meaningful impact on the margin. It's also more difficult to work with the right subcontractors as relationships haven't been established, and that works both ways. You can see here that the vast majority of our sites fit very well with the mid-premium strategy. There are very few outliers purely from a location perspective, and in all likelihood, we will work our way through these sites. In the top right-hand corner are a small number of sites that will present as candidates for disposal, and towards the bottom left are a couple of sites where a partial disposal would make more sense.
Overall, though, this is a pleasing analysis that demonstrates high levels of strategic alignment with an opportunity to free up capital to reinvest in smaller sites and meet our remediation obligations. Alongside our plans for the short-term land bank, I wanted to talk about the strategic land. Previously, we've talked about the sites which will produce sub-20% margin, which run through the numbers over the next couple of years. What's exciting is that as the low-margin sites flow through, we can replace those sites with higher quality land from the strategic land bank, and so we will produce more and more houses at higher margins than we have talked about previously. In the strategic land bank, we have 42 sites and 18,000 plots. Positively, 50% of these sites have either a draft or allocated planning status, and overall, the average discount to open market land portfolio is a healthy 19%.
In short, we have excellent strategic land to support our growth aspirations for the mid-term mid-premium strategy with about 50% either in draft or allocated status already. This land provides opportunities to sell parcels or phases to provide additional capital for future investment, which allows us to create more opportunities.
Pulling this part of the presentation together, what we have set out is a comprehensive transformation program that will deliver sustainable returns for our shareholders.
We've made a good start in the areas, and we've given you some evidence of the improvements that this good start has generated, and you will see that we have absolute clarity on how we're going to take Crest Nicholson forward, putting the customer at the heart of everything that we do, focusing on doing one thing really well, which is the mid-premium segment, and then having strong processes and controls to operate efficiently and effectively. I've been really impressed by the response from our people in embracing the necessary changes that we were making, and my commitment to you is that we will report back the progress against our strategic pillars at the half and year-end results.
Now, I'll hand over to Bill, who will talk you through the financial outputs from this transformation program and how that will underpin the future returns we are aiming to deliver for our shareholders.
First and foremost, our guidance for FY2025 is unchanged. We're then targeting modest volume improvement of mid-single-digit CAGR with a focus on maintaining the open market share at 60%-two-thirds of the overall output, with fewer PRS transactions but replaced with an allowance for increased affordable units on new sites as government policy develops. There are a number of levers to support the improvement in gross margin, and I will explain those on the next slide.
As noted earlier, the efficiency and productivity initiatives that will start to deliver this year and over the following two years, I expect us to reduce our overhead as a percentage of revenue to approximately 7%, which, combined with improvements in gross margin, will allow us to improve EBIT margin into double digits, and we are targeting 13% or more by the end of the planned period. Improvements to profitability, combined with a more efficient balance sheet, is expected to result in an average 200 basis point improvement to return on capital employed over the planned period, with returns at or above 13% by FY2029. The key balance sheet initiatives are land and WIP-related, and I will expand on these later. Here you can see the building blocks for the improvement in gross margin. We expect to be substantially traded out of the current low-margin sites during FY2027.
On its own, this will improve gross margin by 220 basis points. In FY2024, we incurred a further 150 basis points of lost margin from operational missteps. I do not expect us or anyone else to eradicate errors completely, but our planning assumption is that we will drive greater diligence and adherence to process, and this will reduce the volume and value of margin deterioration. We expect to deliver improved margin from our sales initiatives, with improvements in sales price exceeding increased costs from value-enhancing specification upgrades. As we start on new sites, we expect a margin uplift from sites coming through the existing land bank, which will obviously become an increasing part of the portfolio.
Finally, in time, we anticipate a further margin improvement from our planned operational efficiencies with reduced customer service costs as more of the portfolio is built right first time, and we deliver benefits from new standard house designs and improved plotting. Across the planned period, we're targeting an uplift of gross margin from 14% in FY 2024 to 20% by FY 2029, and as you can see, we believe there are sufficient levers to underpin the improvement and potentially drive some betterment. Now, moving to the balance sheet, the material opportunity to improve returns is in the inventory balance. At the end of FY 2024, total inventory was GBP 1,137 million. The largest component of this was land at GBP 670 million. With around 14,000 plots in the short-term land bank, this represents forward cover of around seven years at our current volume.
Our view is that for a housebuilder of our scale and with gradual improvement in the planning cycle, we should reduce the forward cover to between four and five years. As explained earlier, we have identified a small number of sites that are not entirely compatible with the new strategy, and we will look to dispose of these or partially swap them for land more suited to our needs over the next couple of years. We are not in a hurry and can be selective on how we manage the exit from this land. Secondly, we have GBP 334 million of work in progress that can be managed down through better site planning, more careful commencement of build phases, and greater focus on raw material scheduling and holding of materials on site. Our inventory of completed buildings stood at GBP 103 million at year-end.
This will reduce as we complete sales on the legacy apartment schemes and we implement better WIP scheduling. Finally, we have already reduced the part exchange inventory from around GBP 35 million, and I would expect us to run a book of GBP 10-15 million when we reach a steady state. Overall, we're targeting an inventory reduction of around GBP 200 million whilst growing our volume by 20-25%. The cash generated from this programme will substantially cover our fire remediation obligations and ensure that we can maintain a land bank suitable for our medium-term requirements. Now, turning to the balance sheet and capital allocation. As a reminder, the group's existing facilities are an RCF of GBP 250 million with maturity in October 2027 and an GBP 85 million private placement, which amortised through to 2029. These facilities provide ample liquidity for the group's current needs.
In the medium term, I would expect the group to maintain facilities of between GBP 250 million and GBP 300 million, and I am aiming to operate between GBP 50 million of debt and GBP 50 million of cash by FY 2027. As such, the board is expecting to maintain its existing dividend policy of two and a half times cover from adjusted earnings. As we progress through the planned period, the combination of enhanced earnings and greater focus on the balance sheet efficiency will provide optionality on capital allocation once the fire remediation program has been delivered. I now hand you back to Martyn to summarize the investment case and conclude the presentation.
Thank you, Bill. Before we move to Q&A, I thought in conclusion we would bring you back to one of the first slides: Crest, a compelling investment opportunity. I hope that our presentation today has delivered a number of key messages.
The decisions and direction that the business has taken in the recent past have had some serious headwinds to navigate, but now is the time to set a clear strategy that focuses on the positive attributes that exist within Crest Nicholson. We have a strong brand with the right products. I'm confident that we can compete in the mid-premium market and offer our customers a first-class experience with a home they can be proud of. We have a clear plan to action, which will optimize our strong land bank, and as such, I am confident as a team we'll be able to deliver sustainable returns over the coming years. I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to visit us today, and I'll now hand over to questions.
Glynis? Glynis Johnson from Jefferys.
Forgive me, I'm going to launch you with a few, but I'll try and keep them short and sweet. Operational leverage asset, what is the right level for Crest going forward? Second of all, mid-premium. We've heard from lots of the other housebuilders about the need for range, different brands. Can you talk about how many housing types do you think you need? What is going to be the price range potentially that you might see on those? How much of the customer base do you anticipate to be first-time buyers? Anything that gives us some sort of context of what that mid-premium means? Conversion rate currently from inquiries to reservations and where do you think that can get to? Stratlands, the average number of plots per site looks around 430, but is that the mean as well?
Do you have to go through lots of land sales on that stratland as it converts? Kind of questions. And then the intake margin on new land or the intake return on capital employed, perhaps more importantly, on new land that you're buying in the open market.
Anything else, Glynis?
Let me pick off some of the number ones then. We're not going to give numbers around what we're going to intake on new land on. That's commercially sensitive. I'm just not going to share that with anyone. In terms of the stratlands scale, there's quite a big breadth in there, Glynis, and I kind of think there's opportunity in that because where we've got sites which have got 1,000 plots, then they're going to be attractive to other people. I'm all good with that. The sum are 1,000, 1,500, the sum which are a couple of hundred.
It varies quite significantly, but your 400 average is absolutely spot on. I'm going to put Vicky on the spot here.
It's about 1 in 30.
Conversion rates.
Conversion rates about 1 in 30, which is an area that we can focus on. We've already said that we're going to update our website, and we need to ensure that the people that are coming to sites, we've actually got product that they want to buy rather than just a generic website. There is a lot of work to do there. We recognize that.
Do you want to do.
Yeah,
the house type and premium.
In the mid-premium range, there will still be first-time buyers. We just need to have a house type portfolio that covers two beds, three beds, four beds, and five beds. We're not going to build any apartments.
That stage in our history is gone unless there's small-scale affordable. We just need to get our research done and make sure that we redesign the house types that reflect what the customers need.
On operating leverage and asset turn, Glynis, I mean, look, what we've set out here today kind of is if we do what we say we think we can do, then EBIT's going to be five times what it is now. Significant operating leverage and good improvement on asset turn. I'm not going to give you numbers. I'm sure you've got the model for that. Marcus.
Marcus Cole, UBS. I've got three questions. The first one is just on the 20% gross margin target. I think previously you said 23% in the land banks. Just trying to work out the delta between the two of those five years out.
In terms of PRS and the spec changes, what does that mean for ASP moving forward from the mixture? The last one is just on the shape of the balance sheet. Was there any consideration to cutting the dividend?
I'll go on the first and the third. We could get to 23, Marcus, if everything goes our way. Very conscious that we've been here many—or we haven't, but others have been here many times before and made commitments that haven't been met. We're pushing for as good as we can get. We can see a good line of sight to 20%, and if we can go further, then we will, obviously.
In terms of the dividend, we've considered lots of different things as going through this journey, but keeping the dividend or expecting to keep the dividend where it is, we think is the right thing for now.
Okay. We talked about on one of the slides PRS. The PRS deals that were available four years ago, perhaps, were quite marginal discounts to open market value, typically 5-8%. The market's changed. Those discounts now, that market's become a lot more sophisticated, and discounts of circa 20% are fairly typical. In terms of our PRS costs, we've got to just run through our book that we've got on at the moment. I don't intend to take any more on unless there's a reasonable deal out there at a point in time that we need it. There's no additional cost coming through us from discounting PRS.
We're just not doing it. The spec changes that we've made, actually, with the overall build cost savings that we've made through better procurement have impacted us very negligibly, which has also enabled us to put the prices up as well. All about value capture. And average sales prices, take out the PRS in time, that average sale price will go up. To what degree? I haven't got that number. It won't be as much at the moment because we're not taking the 20% discounts that are being offered at the moment. The PRS things that we've got in the books are at 5-7%. Does that make sense?
Thanks, Glynis.
Thanks. And Aynsley Lanner from Investec. I think I've got three as well, actually.
Just in terms of the—I think on slide 21, the embedded margin in the land bank, it says at time of purchase. Presumably, that was at the time of purchase of the land. Just wondered if you could give an indication of what the kind of estimate of the embedded gross margin is based on current pricing and cost. Second question on the gross margin, again, just the—I think you said a 220 basis points improvement just as the lower margin sites kind of fade out. Is that for the next two years, essentially, the benefit in the gross margin is really those lower margin sites on the PRS deals just fading out? There is no help from the market, assuming there. Thirdly, on the balance sheet, just wondered what you would expect the land creditor balance to be as you kind of reach a steady state business.
Okay. On the gross margin of the land bank, I do not read too much into the words, Ainsley, of what is in there. We think what we have got is still at that 23% level, but we have made allowance for this to—that we will not do everything perfectly. On the 220 basis points, yes, that is 25 and 20. We will get a good chunk of that in 25. Kind of the rest of it in 26 is a little bit in 27, but it is kind of—it is in the noise, really. Then land creditors, I would expect—we ended the year, I think, with 130 odd, something like that. I would not expect it to be that high going forward. When we get to steady state, probably going to be more like 70, I would think. Chris.
Thank you. Good morning. Chris, Management of Deutsche.
I just wanted to ask around the site numbers against the profile of the leasing capital from the balance sheet. You obviously struggled with the level of capital you've got, so just wondered how that's commensurate with your volume targets. Next one, really, I'd just quite be—I'd be interested to hear about how your free cash flow's going to manifest going forward, the fire safety there, profits kind of at the lower levels, and kind of what you see as spare free cash flow to kind of fund that investment. Oh, and just a quick update on legacy sites. I think we were thinking about them being similar this year to last year in percentage terms. Can you just give us an update on that?
Yep. First one, I think, was on site numbers.
I mean, the challenge we've got is in the mix in that we've got some really big sites, which is one outlet. Part of what we want to do here is either dispose of that site and use part of that capital to deal with fire remediation and part of it to buy smaller, short-term sites. We can do that either as completely separate transactions or look to trade with someone who's going to buy the big site. We're not looking at massive site growth over the next five years. It's kind of going to be incrementally a couple of year type thing is what we're thinking. Obviously, as sites roll out, you've got to replace them with new ones. That still puts you in 8-10 new sites a year, probably. Sorry, Chris, I didn't get all the questions.
Free cash flow.
Look, I mean, over this time period, we've got the right level of funding to pay for the fire, get the new land so that when we get to FY2029, we've still got a land bank that is good for the five years after that. If there's anything left after that, I'll be delighted.
Perhaps just a quick supplemental. Average state, do you think you'll be using much average state? The year-end numbers are fairly prudent, so it's going to be a varying position through the year.
I mean, at the moment, we kind of have a GBP 100 million swing over the year, which is one of the things that we're all looking to reduce. We've talked a lot when we've been out to see you all about we do most of our transactions on the 30th of April and the 31st of October.
There's no commercial or seasonal reason we do that. It's how the business has trained itself. We're doing a lot of different things. One of the aspects of the sales commission scheme is that the team get more commission for selling earlier in the year and taking delivery out of those two end months and delivering earlier. They don't get it for pushing it back, but they get it for delivering it early. We're just kind of starting to drive those behaviors through the business, and it'll take a bit of time. I'd like to see that reduced, but we're not allowing for that.
Legacy?
Nothing new to report. Cranking through the surveys. No new surprises.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you very much. This is Charlie Campbell at Stifel.
Sort of one broad question, I suppose, and a couple of things to help me in trying to work stuff out. You kind of gave us a number of plots in the strategic land banks or a number of sites in the strategic land bank. Could you do the same for the consented? You probably count the dots on page 37, but
I have not got that number with me.
I am not counting the dots. Also, looking at that slide 37, you have said that 90% of your sites are well aligned, but clearly the bigger ones are the ones that are not. I mean, does that look as if maybe 80% of the land bank by kind of value and volume is right and 20% out? Is that?
We do not need to sell. With the dots down here, they are obviously very close to the offices, so they are good sites.
We don't need to sell the whole site off. To bring it into this segment, we sell parcels of that site off to bring it into here. To bring the cash in, use it for buying new land or paying for fire remediation. Similarly, the lease. We've just got options.
Right. Yep.
Because looking at your sort of target for inventory reduction, it looks reasonably conservative to me, and it looks as if you could do more than that. Within those five years between the end point and the start point, are you sort of implicitly assuming there's some land cost inflation there?
We're assuming that in five years' time, we're a 25% bigger business, and we need more land to keep us going for the five years after that.
Yeah. Okay.
That's the difference.
The gross reduction, as it were, from the 1.1 could be kind of bigger than that, and you reinvest as you go.
If we were not going to do 2,300-2,400, then yeah. If we were stuck at 2,000, then yeah, we would not need as much land going forward. There is a trade-off there.
Okay. Sorry, just you gave some numbers to that slide, and I was not writing quickly enough. I think you gave us some numbers for the reduction in each of the three categories: land, WIP, and sort of other. Can you remind me?
I gave you the starting point. Right. I did not give you the end point.
Thanks very much.
Hi, Dariusz Kopki from Barclays. I have got two things. What do you see as the biggest challenge or risk to you getting to this plan?
The second one is more around what kind of market improvement have you factored in? Is there anything that you've included in the plan?
In terms of the market, relatively benign, small levels of improvement alongside a Labour government who have clearly got the bit between the teeth here. We're not looking for the market to go gangbusters. Similarly, if there's a macro shock that kills it, then that's out of our control.
That's the biggest challenge,
really, as well.
Things that are outside of our control. Anything we can control,
we'll sort it. Do you want to do challenge?
That was the challenge answer. I can't control what I can't control.
Yeah. I don't think there's anything difficult in this plan, but there's a lot in this plan.
It is just having all the streams working together and just making sure we keep the pace high enough that it is uncomfortable but manageable versus getting it going too fast and people cannot live with it.
Okay.
Any other questions? No?
Okay. That concludes the formal presentation and Q&A. Thank you. What we are going to do now is there are three people from our leadership.