BRITAIN’S biggest retirement housebuilder, Bournemouth-based McCarthy & Stone, has reported a drop in reservations and a rise in cancellations since the EU referendum.

The developer reported “robust” growth in its first year of trading as a public company but said it could miss the growth target it had set for the year ending August 2017.

Sales were completed on 2,299 units – up 20 per cent on the previous year.

Revenue rose 31 per cent to around £635million and average sales price rose eight per cent to £259,000.

The company said: “There has been evidence of some weakness in the secondary housing market since our trading update on June 29. Whilst website enquiries have increased, and we have continued to take new reservations, these have been at a lower level than we saw in the first nine months of the financial year and cancellations have been at higher levels.

“Whilst it is too early to judge what medium term impact we will see from the EU referendum result and the Bank of England’s subsequent changes to monetary policy, prolonged housing market weakness, particularly in the secondary market, could affect our ability to deliver our targeted 15 per cent volume growth previously indicated for the financial year ending August 31 2017.

“There has been some improvement in customer sentiment during the month of August, however, it is too early to predict at this stage whether these improving conditions will persist into the new financial year.”

McCarthy & Stone said its land bank increased to around 10,200 plots. It had around £52m of net cash at the year end.

CEO Clive Fenton said: “We continue to capitalise on increasing demand for retirement housing driven by the UK’s rapidly ageing population and have delivered strong growth in completions, reservations and profit this year.

“Notwithstanding current increased market uncertainty following the EU referendum result and any financial impact on the business in the short term, McCarthy & Stone remains in robust health to capitalise on a continuing benign land market and the attractive fundamentals of the retirement market over the medium term.”

The company said 3.5m people over 60 in the UK had expressed interest in buying a retirement property, but only 141,000 specialist retirement properties for owner occupation had ever bene built.

It said it was in a unique position to capitalise on changing demographics, with 74 per cent of household growth to 2039 expected to come from those aged 65 and over.