Houses, and therefore housebuilders, are never far from the front pages. The stakes were raised after the mini-budget, which sent mortgage interest rates rocketing and builders’ shares plummeting.
The sector was dragged down fairly uniformly, but not all builders are the same. MJ Gleeson’s concentration on low-cost houses for first-time buyers and ex-council tenants, often on the national living wage, in the north and Midlands has arguably led investors to underestimate it. But, just as many people are buying no-frills groceries, Gleeson is benefiting from buyers moving downmarket to counteract dearer mortgages.
This column recommended buying the shares in September 2019, at 754p. They rose promisingly to 939p by February 2020 but then Covid struck and the rest is history. The cost of living crisis
