Right, good morning everybody, and thank you for joining us today at Harworth's full-year results presentation. Today we'll cover the financial results and operational performance of the business for 2024. I'm Lynda Shillaw, Chief Executive, and I'm delighted to be presenting alongside Dougie Maudsley, who's our Interim Chief Financial Officer. Dougie's covering for Kitty Patmore, who's currently on maternity leave, and he'll be familiar to many of you from previous results presentations and capital markets days, as he's also our Group Finance Director. I'm pleased to see so many familiar faces in the room today, and I'd like to extend a warm welcome to those who've joined us online too. I'm delighted to say that we had a great year, and the business continues to perform across the board.
This is a real achievement against a market backdrop that remains pretty tricky, with volatility and uncertainty continuing at the macro level. Our performance highlights the strength of our through-the-cycle business model, which is underpinned by the skill of the Harworth team, who create value through their management actions across planning, investment, development, and sales. The result of these activities translates into a total accounting return of 9.1%. This puts us again amongst the leaders in the sector. EPRA NDV grew to GBP 719.5 million, up 8.5%, a 17.2 pence increase year- on- year to 222.3 pence per share. Our loan-to-value outturned at 5.4% and net debt at GBP 46.7 million. We continue to maintain a low level of leverage compared to our peers and the market more broadly, and in this context, our total accounting return is even more impressive.
Our liquidity position remains strong at GBP 192.4 million, providing the capital needed to deliver our strategy. Over the last five years, we've delivered an average total accounting return of 8.4% per annum, which is a 330 basis points outperformance against the MSCI All Property Index, which in the same period averaged 5.1% per annum, whilst maintaining prudent debt and strong liquidity, which is fundamental to our business model, and it enables us to generate both attractive and sustainable returns. A further testament to our hard work was entering the FTSE 250 in September last year, which was a significant milestone for the business. In 2024, we achieved a record year for total property sales of GBP 215.8 million, which was up 71% year- on- year, and this had two core components.
During the year, we sold land capable of delivering 4.4 million sq ft of industrial and logistics space in two landmark transactions: a GBP 53.4 million sale to Microsoft at Skelton Grange and a GBP 53.5 million sale to Frasers Group at Ansty, with both transactions generating significant value and profitability for the group. We also sold an impressive 2,385 residential plots across a mix of tenures, which was a record number of plot sales for the business, and they were at prices broadly in line with December 2023 book values. This was a 104% increase year- on- year, and it puts us on a run rate towards our target of 2,000 plot sales per annum, noting that the year-to-year mix of sales across the portfolios will vary.
We remain focused on making progress against our 2030 and 2040 net zero carbon targets and saw a 17% reduction in carbon emissions, driven by the use of alternative fuels for direct plant operations and increased use of electric vehicles by staff. Now, for the next three slides, we're going to review the progress that we're making in creating value and de-risking our pipeline, and the progress that we're making against our strategic targets. In 2024, our planning and technical teams successfully delivered planning consents for 6.8 million sq ft of space and secured 3.5 million sq ft of allocations. Our consented pipeline now totals 8.4 million sq ft, and we are targeting the delivery of around 4 million sq ft with a GBP 0.6 billion GDV between today and the end of 2027.
This will be achieved through a combination of on-balance sheet development of assets to retain in our investment portfolio alongside some selective speculative development and a mix of build-to-suit for owner-occupiers, service land sales, and forward funding agreements. You can see that following the land sales at Ansty and Skelton and the acquisitions made during the year, we have the potential in our land bank to develop 33.3 million sq ft. The scale of our pipeline sustains our growth beyond our strategic plan, and there is significant underlying value to deliver as we progress the sites. The progress that we have made working our sites through planning has de-risked over two-thirds of this pipeline. Our residential land bank is a key source of value and capital to fund the growth of the business.
This portfolio is more mature in terms of site with planning consents, and through the year, we invested in servicing plots to drive sales, concluding 13 transactions in the year. At the end of 2024, we had over 31,000 plots in our pipeline, and of these, 14,000 are in the planning system, which de-risked 46% of our pipeline, and you can see that around 4,500 plots actually have a planning consent. This slide sets out our progress against our strategic targets against the 2020 baseline, and you can see from this that we're continuing to make progress against all of them. Our investment portfolio is now 45% modern Grade A. It's up from less than 10% in 2020, and we will continue to drive this forward as we develop assets from a wider number of our industrial and logistics sites in the remaining years of the plan.
In terms of our direct development targets, in 2024, we were on site developing 377,000 sq ft, which is an 89% increase on 2020. We are also on site with enabling works for 3.1 million sq ft, opening up the next generation of sites that will start to develop in 2025 and through the remaining years of the plan. We have successfully accelerated residential land sales and grown our range of residential products, generating cash to maintain our prudent debt levels and invest in growing the business. 2024 saw a 177% increase in plots sold on the 2020 baseline, and we are well on track to our 2,000 plots per annum average target. We continue to acquire or secure control of sites with great potential, and we have maintained our 12-15 year land supply target, enabling us to continue to scale the business beyond 2027.
The consistent progress that we're making against each of our strategic pillars underpins our ability to deliver against our two core targets: to grow our EPRA NDV to GBP 1 billion by the end of 2027 and our investment portfolio to GBP 900 million by the end of 2029. We are going to come back with a deeper dive on how we'll continue to scale the business later in the presentation. Now, we split our portfolio into three main subcategories: strategic land, major developments, and the investment portfolio. Strategic land includes land without planning or land with planning secured but where work has not yet started. Major developments includes land with planning and where we've started work on site, and this can be land with infrastructure underway to develop serviced land, but it also includes where we're building industrial and logistics or delivering our mixed tenure products.
Our investment portfolio includes completed industrial and logistics buildings and provides a source of rental income. We have a small portion, helpfully named Other, which is largely income generating and includes some natural resources and agricultural land and some land with the opportunity for future energy uses and natural capital. What I really want you to take away from this slide are the following. Firstly, our gross property assets are valued at GBP 858.8 million, which is up 39% from December 2020, a reflection of our management actions and the value that we are driving as we implement our strategy. Secondly, the green color on the donut on the left-hand side shows that over 63% of our portfolio by value is industrial and logistics, and by 2029, we expect this to be 85%.
Thirdly, the tables on the right-hand side show how we create value as we move strategic land through the planning process and into development. The strategic land portfolio is our secret weapon, and as you can see from our results, it is key to scaling the business and sustaining long-term through the cycle growth. In this part of the portfolio, we drive the majority of value gains through land assembly and progressing the sites through the planning process. The charts on the right show the movements in the portfolio through 2024. As you can see, acquisitions added a total of GBP 15.5 million of value, and planning progress delivered a further GBP 40 million of value gains across the two land portfolios.
The disposals during the year in the industrial and logistics portfolio reflect the main disposal of our Ansty site to Frasers Group following the receipt of a planning approval for 3.5 million sq ft. Key acquisitions in the strategic land portfolio during the year were for further land assembly at our Wingates site and our investment into our first residential strategic partnership on an allocated site at Grimsby West, which brought around 3,000 plots into the portfolio. Major developments are the sites which are undergoing infrastructure works to create serviced land or have direct development underway, some of which will be retained in our investment portfolio as we implement the strategy to move it to 100% Grade A. As the charts on the right-hand side show, the valuation of these portfolios increased in 2024, largely driven by the GBP 82 million of development activity across both portfolios.
Pulling out a couple of key transactions, you can see from the industrial and logistics chart the disposal to Microsoft of the first phase of Skelton Grange, the works on site to enable the completion of phase II in the development spend number, and once concluded, this site is expected to deliver an IRR in excess of 40%. On the residential chart, you see Stewartby, which is a site with outline planning consent for 1,000 homes, making up the majority of the acquisitions number. The GBP 73.4 million of disposals reflects the plot sales made during the year. The value gains in this part of the portfolio were underpinned by our sales activity, proving pricing, as well as optimizing our master plans to support increased local housing requirements.
The fundamentals of our investment portfolio remain strong, with it generating GBP 17.5 million of headline rent from a diverse range of sectors. It remains an important source of our funding and security to our lenders. As we grow this portfolio to GBP 0.9 billion by the end of 2029, it will underpin increased recurring earnings and future dividend growth. The valuation chart shows that the key drivers of valuation growth were the acquisition of Catalyst and revaluation gains driven by management actions and improved rents. Like-for-like rents increased by 4.9%, adding GBP 0.7 million per annum of headline rental income. This was also at a 4.3% premium to December 2023 ERVs, with renewals and rent reviews achieving an average of a 22% uplift to previous passing rents.
The reversion potential of the portfolio is around 19% against year-end ERVs, and vacancy rates are 5.6%, which is 4.3% lower than 2023. With that, I'll hand you over to Dougie. Choreography, here we go.
Thank you, Lynda, and good morning, everyone. Lynda began by saying that Harworth has had a great year, and I'm delighted to say that this operational success has translated through to the group's financial performance. Starting with a look at our income statement and the underlying revenue table in the bottom left, total property sales were GBP 215.8 million for the year. This was a material increase on 2023. Within this figure is the impact of record residential serviced land sales, the phase I sale at Skelton Grange to Microsoft, and the sale of the Ansty strategic land site to Frasers Group.
Revenue from income generation was slightly lower than 2023, reflecting the full year impact of previous sales of secondary investment property. Revenue from Grade A assets within the investment portfolio will increase in future years with the full year impact of the acquisition of Catalyst, the impact of completed vertical direct development, and other letting and rent review activities. Development revenue includes build-to-suit development on behalf of an owner-occupier and the start of development work at Skelton Grange for Microsoft. Together, this gives underlying revenue of GBP 257 million, which is 70% higher than 2023, and statutory revenue of GBP 181.6 million, as reflected in the statutory income statement. Administrative expenses increased by GBP 5.8 million, and this was principally due to higher salary expenses from increased employee numbers to support the delivery of the strategy.
We now have 138 people working across our sites across our three regions, compared to 120 at the end of 2023. Other gains of GBP 78.1 million included increases in the fair value of investment properties driven primarily by management actions along with profits on sale of investment property. All these factors combined give us a profit after tax of GBP 57.2 million, an increase of over 50% compared to 2023. Turning to dividends, the Board has decided on a final dividend of 1.125 pence per share. This is a 10% increase on last year's dividend, and it has now increased by 10% for eight consecutive years. Moving to the balance sheet, our EPRA NDV per share increased by 8.4% to 222.3 pence, reflecting EPRA NDV of GBP 719.5 million. This keeps us on track to reach the GBP 1 billion target by the end of 2027.
As noted, management actions, including planning progress and master plan optimization, created significant value, and this increase is reflected in the increase in the value of the property portfolio at the year-end. Combined with the dividend paid during the year, the EPRA NDV increase led to a total accounting return of 9.1% for the year, which is a significant increase on the 5.1% achieved in 2023. Looking at funding and liquidity, our financing strategy remains to be prudently geared. We have a target net loan-to-value of below 20% at year-ends, with a maximum of 25% during the year. At the 31st of December, our net loan-to-value was 5.4%, well within our target levels.
The chart on this slide bridges the small increase in our net debt from GBP 36.4 million, as at the end of 2023, to GBP 46.7 million at December 2024. This increase reflects acquisition spend as well as development spend to progress works on our sites through the year, offset by the receipts from sales. The timing of cash receipts towards the end of December led to a high year-end cash balance, with GBP 90 million of loans repaid in early January. The chart also shows the headroom afforded by our cash position and revolving credit facility with GBP 192.4 million of cash and available facilities at the year-end. Our main revolving credit facility runs until March 2027, with plenty of headroom to deliver our planned activities. We will continue to use site-specific direct development and infrastructure loans to support our growth alongside this.
In summary, this was another very strong set of results for the group. We continue to deliver growth in our net assets and EPRA NDV. We have a solid financial position with low loan-to-value, cash, and available facilities, all of which will help us to progress our strategy. Having outlined the financial performance for the year, let us now turn to the future. I will talk through our target of scaling the investment portfolio, and Lynda will then talk through how we will achieve GBP 1 billion of EPRA NDV by the end of 2027. During 2024, we announced our increased focus on industrial and logistics and our target to grow the investment portfolio to GBP 0.9 billion by the end of 2029.
The investment portfolio plays an important role in the funding of the group, allowing the group to support debt which is flexible to the seasonal nature of the group's funding requirements. As the investment portfolio grows, it will provide optionality for the group's funding, supporting the needs of the group as it continues to grow. The increased scale of the investment portfolio will also provide higher rental income, and this in turn will provide the opportunity to increase the income component of returns through higher dividends. This journey did not start in 2024. In 2021, we launched our strategy to increase direct development of industrial and logistics space and reposition the investment portfolio to modern Grade A.
As you can see from this slide, we have added over 900,000 sq ft of Grade A assets into the portfolio since then, and 70% of this has been directly developed by Harworth on sites that we have enabled and promoted. In 2025, we will continue to add to this through increased direct development, and we are currently on site at Droitwich and the AMP. Both of these assets will transfer into the investment portfolio in 2025, and up to 500,000 sq ft of further direct development can be started this year, subject to market conditions. You can see from the next slide the impact of this on the portfolio as a whole. The proportion of Grade A assets in our investment portfolio has increased every year since 2020, mainly through completed direct development, supplemented this year by the acquisition of Catalyst.
Since 2021, we have also sold secondary assets following completion of asset management activities, realizing proceeds of GBP 81.7 million for reinvestment and further accelerating the evolution towards modern Grade A. You can also see that as we have improved the quality of the portfolio, we have driven higher average headline rents. The level of direct development will increase significantly in the outer years of the plan, supporting the growth of the investment portfolio to GBP 0.9 billion by the end of 2029. I will now hand you back to Lynda.
Thanks, Dougie. Moving sites through the planning process is a key driver of value and returns. Our pipeline of sites with planning consents at 8.4 million sq ft and 4,568 plots is the platform from which we will continue to grow the business to GBP 1 billion of EPRA NDV by the end of 2027.
Our through-the-cycle business model underpins this platform, and our focus on allocating capital alongside our specialist skill set to ensure to secure ownership and control of land, optimize master plans, secure outline and detailed planning consents, and mitigate delivery risks by investing in infrastructure and securing power reservations as early as possible, create the opportunities to drive value and accelerate our sites. We're also focused on enhancing the value of our serviced land products, where we have opportunities to tilt into higher value uses such as data centers, as our actions show at Skelton Grange with Microsoft. Our portfolio is in a great position to deliver into a market where there is a shortage of supply across our regions.
Our master plans give us flexibility in the products that can be delivered from our sites, and with around 4 million sq ft of development from our consented sites starting from 2025, we will begin to accelerate development as we move through the latter years of the plan. We anticipate that around 40% of the product that we deliver to 2027 will be held in our investment portfolio. That is the dark blue box. The remaining 60% or so of the capacity will be a mixture of build-to-suit, forward-funded, and serviced land, which is in the grey box. It is not just about building. In order to sustain the momentum in our pipeline, we will also be on site with enabling works for over 5 million sq ft of product.
It's a white box, which will provide the additional buildings to take our investment portfolio to GBP 900 million and feed into our growth beyond 2027. Our control of our land bank is a key strength, and as we develop and enable the sites, we will remain flexible and continue to explore opportunities to create enhanced value and returns, capitalizing on market conditions. You can see this in action in the type of transactions that we've completed at Skelton Grange, Ansty, and Kellingley over the last three years. The business is well positioned to continue to scale our industrial and logistics development pipeline and accelerate development. Since launching our strategy in 2021, we have delivered a compound annual growth rate of 8.7%, which adds up to a 39.5% EPRA NDV growth to the end of 2024.
This has been delivered through a volatile economic environment, and it highlights the resilience of our through-the-market business model. We've built the business and progressed to the next generation of our industrial and logistics sites to the point where we now have an exciting runway to deliver a significant volume development in the remaining three years of the plan. We are targeting an 11.6% compound annual growth rate to take us to GBP 1 billion of EPRA NDV at the end of 2027, something that we are confident that we can achieve. In a pretty sticky market, Harworth has some real strengths and opportunities that propel us forward and enable us to keep driving growth. Our markets remain in structural undersupply, and both wider planning and policy reform and the U.K.'s critical infrastructure and emerging industrial strategy support our model.
We have a large, concentrated, and well-located pipeline, which can deliver at scale into emerging regional strategies. Our products are aligned to investor and occupier demands in our regions, and there is material underlying value to be unlocked. On this, our superpowers are our strategic land bank, our long-term approach, and our specialist skills. We deliver all of this by recycling our capital to drive returns and growth and maintaining a strong balance sheet with prudent leverage. Our through-the-cycle business model provides resilience and enables sustainable growth in the business. We remain confident in achieving our strategic targets of GBP 1 billion of EPRA NDV in 2027 and a GBP 900 million investment portfolio by the end of 2029. We have a proven track record of delivering attractive returns through the cycle.
With that, I'd like to say a big thank you to the Harworth team who worked so hard to deliver such a great set of results for 2024. To all of you for taking the time to join us today, we'll now turn to questions. We'll take them from those in the room first, and then we'll move to the webcast if there are any questions. If you're unable to sort of get your questions in, please reach out to us, and we'll be happy to come back to you offline. Thank you very much.
Hi, good morning. It's James Kassouf from Behance . Dougie, you mentioned in terms of the investment portfolio, the build-out, the development, that it was slightly, obviously, dependent on market conditions. Just wondering what you're seeing today.
Are you seeing a bit more kind of renewed confidence from occupiers in terms of signing leases? Clearly, the vacancy has come down quite considerably. I mean, does that give you the confidence to do more development speculatively, or are you still looking largely for pre-lets?
It's sort of a mix of both, James. I mean, to sort of come to the first bit of the question, occupiers have never really gone away, sort of over the last couple of years. It's just that transactions have been slower. Everybody's found that across the market to conclude. What you're seeing is actually a move, certainly, towards prime stock and a lot more sort of secondary stock coming into the market. Transactions have been happening.
We take a view at a portfolio level across the geographies as to how much spec we're comfortable with from a risk and return perspective. You have seen us build spec at Gateway 36. We built Bardon spec. We have got spec going on at the AMP, which is now sort of pretty much sort of let up. We are building Droitwich spec. At any point in time, we will actually have sort of some of our balance sheet will be funding spec development in sort of where we think it is the right thing to do. I think the part of the cycle we are in at the moment, it will be that combination of pre-lets and spec to sort of provide some balance.
Let's say we're sort of active with a significant number of conversations across sites because I think it goes to this point about we've got sites that can deliver product at scale. We've just enabled over 1 million sq ft at Chatterley. The platforms are created. We're ready to build. There are not a significant number of sites across the regions that are in that state of readiness, basically.
Great. Thank you. You gave a bit more color in terms of the build-out of the investment portfolio. I think, Lynda, you touched on the fact that as that grows, the rental income grows, and therefore you could potentially look to grow the dividend as well.
Are you able to give any guidance, maybe as an interim step, in terms of the rental income becoming such that it will cover the running cost and the dividend today? Is that not the way you think about the kind of the cost base?
It's not really the way we've thought about it.
No, I guess what you could say is that as we get to GBP 0.9 billion, the revenue you're going to be talking about is in the GBP 45 million-GBP 50 million range. Over time, it will increase. We're not talking about it necessarily in the specifics.
I mean, the focus, I mean, again, just for context, we've been really successful in the growth that we've achieved over the last few years.
That is for two things because you cannot deliver the sort of strategy that we have sort of laid out without increased funding. When we refinanced the business at the beginning of 2022, we increased the sort of the RCF. The other thing is people. You can see, actually, we have grown the resource in the team and continue to do so quite selectively, not at the same rate as we did in 2021 into 2022. Where have we been putting the resource? We have been putting it into development teams, the project management teams, the planning teams. What you are seeing is the result of sort of having more people means we can get more sites moving, more planning applications moving. That is what is driving the results. Hi, Bjorn.
Hi, Bjorn Zietsman, Panmure Liberum.
Very strong total returns over the past five years, largely delivered without the use of significant leverage. Looking forward, you've mentioned the sort of 25% LTV. On the GBP 0.9 billion investment portfolio, how would you think about LTV specifically on that portfolio once you've reached that sort of level? A follow-up question just on labor. Obviously, there are targets to improve the planning process. Are you seeing any of that coming through on the ground?
Do you want to do funding and I'll do planning? My favorite subject.
Absolutely. I guess at this point, we're not saying anything other than that we've got our 20% at year end and 25% through the year. As we grow that portfolio, it will provide different options for different types of debt and also more efficiently.
I think as it grows, we'll make those decisions, but we haven't made a specific decision on it yet.
On planning, planning reform and everything that's happening is generally, I think, really positive for the sector. I think I say in the sort of in the RS, it will take some time for that to settle down. It's not a bill passed today, and it's immediately in action on the ground tomorrow. The point I would make is look at what we've delivered against the backdrop of probably some of the trickiest, most dysfunctional sort of planning sort of rules and systems that we've probably had over the last five years. The business has continued to deliver sort of really sort of strong total accounting returns.
With a planning environment around us that is more supportive, that's more friendly, that's encouraging development in the sectors that we're in particularly, sort of we've got great sites to deliver into that, and we're quite excited about what that could do for the business basically.
Morning, Toby Thorrington from Equity Development. A couple of balance sheet questions, I think, if that's okay. Three fairly chunky transactions announced in the last month of the year. Can you just give us a sense of whether there's any truing up to be done in the balance sheet in terms of additional cash to come in, obligations to go out, tax related, anything like that?
I guess what you can see in the balance sheet is a number of things. That high level of residential sales, as sales to host builders normally include a level of deferred payments.
You'll see a higher level of trade receivables as a result of that. What that does do is it gives us good visibility of our future cash receipts, and we maintain security on the sites, which gives us comfort over the credit risk as well. That's one bit that you'll see.
Sorry, is that contingent on anything?
No. The second part you'll see in the payable side, you'll see an increase because we have a decent amount of that went out in January as a result of the year-end sales. We've also, with the purchase of Stewartby, that's another example where it's a GBP 30 million site, but we've agreed payment terms over two years. Therefore, that's just allowing us to manage the capital efficiently on that.
Okay. I'll do the maths myself then. Thank you.
It sounds as though, obviously, loan-to-value very low. You helpfully mentioned that the RCF was substantially paid down in January as well as we'd probably expect. It sounds as though you're not going to be pushing the balance sheet very hard this year, possibly in the first half anyway. Can you give some thoughts about how you expect the balance sheet to develop?
I think just on that point, and Dougie can sort of come back on how the balance sheet will develop. I mean, it's not just about sort of allocating expenditure to vertical development. The GBP 82 million that you saw, sort of that we spent last year, a lot of that was infrastructure works. It was works to basically enable Chatterley so that we have a fully serviced site and we can actually sort of create the platforms.
It's the infrastructure that's needed to facilitate the residential plot sales. In any year, we've got quite a significant amount. As we do it, as we work across more sites, that increases the infrastructure works going on. The direct development side has said, we're on site already with Droitwich. We're on site, actually, with some non-I&L stuff, which is just the creation of community facilities and shopping areas at Waverley. As we move through this year, you'll start to see us actually lean into the next bits of spec build that we'll do into the market because we think that it's still right to build some spec in the market that we're in. As we secure pre-lets, you'll see it ramp up from there. It's a funny year.
I mean, 2024 was sort of a year where we all felt like we were walking through treacle for most of it. 2025 has sort of started maybe a bit more optimistic, but it still feels a little bit like you're walking through treacle. I think you'll see the activity sort of ramp up as we move into the second half.
Yeah, absolutely. It is normal for us to increase the level of debt through the middle of the year as we go out on site and through the earthwork season. Our sales tend to be back-ended, which then brings it back down.
I mean, in doing that, the really important and the key thing is the sales that come into the end of the year take it back down, and then we go again.
We literally are recycling capital as efficiently as we can from the proceeds that we generate into creating the sort of the next set of returns.
Okay, thanks. Just sort of a cash tax question. In a normal year, should cash tax be similar to the P&L or?
In the P&L, the impact of the value gains means that the deferred tax is a significant portion of it. Then we have points of crystallisation either on sale, but also when we transfer from investment to development property. In the main, we can choose to either pay the tax at that point or defer it until the sale.
Got you. Okay.
Given all of the above, it sounds like considerations of refinancing the banking facility is more likely to be towards the end of this year, maybe beginning of next year rather than any tearing rush to do it now.
We do not need to refinance until March 2027, but we will not leave it late to refi. It is something that we are looking at at the moment, actually.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Any more? We have any online? I am looking at Juliana. No online?
Yeah, one online question. Sorry. Sure. Just about the residential land bank. The question is just talking about what percentage of our land bank is focused on residential development, and can we continue to build on that land bank?
Okay. We are 63% industrial and logistics from the donuts.
I think that means we must be about low 30% on resi, so between residential Strategic Land and residential major developments. The strategy is to move industrial and logistics to be 85% as we build out that investment portfolio alongside becoming active across far more of our industrial and logistics sites, to build that out to 85% by 2029. Residential is really important to us. You will see actually that we are just over 31,000 plots. We have gone up in terms of the number of plots we brought into the portfolio this year. I think that is up about 17% from sort of memory, 15%, sorry. You will see that we brought that in because that actually is a source of capital. The residential land bank drives value as we work sites through the planning system.
You see that value gains, but then also as we sort of bring sites forward for sale, that actually throws cash off for us to reinvest. It is quite important, but it will become over time a smaller proportion of a much bigger pie is probably the way to think about it.
Just continuing on that from Davie, in terms of our residential product, can you talk a little bit about the demand for that? Have you seen a change in the tone from the major house builders?
The demand for the serviced land product remains really strong. It is really resilient. I think I have said that virtually every time I have presented results. It is a de-risk product for house builders, whether they are nationals, sort of like full pipeline in their regions or regional house builders.
That has held up really well, actually, as we've gone through the sort of last couple of years. We are sort of selling at sort of the 2024, they're at or ahead of December 2023 book values before any transaction costs, but in the main, we're ahead. That demand hasn't gone away. I mean, we now sort of transact with over 20, well over 20 sort of major and regional house builders. The bit that we've also seen that's really encouraging is like we're on our third transaction now with Great Places, which is the affordable housing product that we're on site delivering with a housing contractor sort of partner. Again, sort of we've got great traction across sort of that part of our product range as we went through 2024. BTR is still a bit quiet. I think it's certainly in single family, actually.
I think that's pretty much sort of sector-wide because that's about availability of stock and who can deliver in at scale. It doesn't sort of it performs really well. It's really important to us, not just for cash, but because the level that we make those sales at proves our valuation. That's really sort of and we've continued to do that and drive values forward.
Just the last question, can you talk about your view of the forward funding market for 2025?
I think it will improve is probably the sort of simple answer to say. Look, I mean, as a sector, interest rates are really important to us. Even if yields stayed where they were, actually, interest rates are still really, really important to us.
I think actually, as we sort of move through 2025 and rates are still predicted to sort of come in, I think actually sort of that forward funding market will galvanize a bit. There is capital looking to deploy. When I sort of talk to the people who are on the capital side of the sector, there is no shortage of capital looking to deploy. The challenge for anybody who wants to bring development forward using that capital is actually what they're prepared to pay. We're not a forced seller. We're not a forced buyer. We're in a great position with a strong balance sheet, and we can actually fund a lot of what we're talking about from that balance sheet in the early years of the plan. That's really what we focused on. Okay, we're done.
Right, with that, thank you ever so much, everybody, and we draw that to a close. Thank you.