By Costas Pitas
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's biggest housebuilder by volume Barratt said on Wednesday it was on track to meet key profitability targets as it builds on land with higher margins and sees strong sales, particularly in London.
Barratt, which built more than 14,800 homes in the year to June 2014, said it would meet its sales target of 15,700 completions in the coming year, including homes from joint ventures.
Several housebuilders have posted buoyant results in recent months but cautioned that double-digit price rises are ending amid evidence of a housing market slowdown.
Barratt said it expected the two measures of profitability it is targeting to rise, with return on capital employed up from 19.5 percent in 2014 to 25 percent in 2017 and gross margins increasing from 16.8 to at least 20 percent during the same period.
CEO Mark Clare said that the builder's confidence was due to more of the land the firm built on having been purchased since the 2009 financial crisis.
"Because our business is a long-term business, we already have secured most of the land that it going to deliver in full year 2017," said Clare. "We know the profitability of those sites."
By 2017 the firm expects almost all of the homes it builds to be done on plots of land which were bought with the profitability measures in mind.
Barratt also said demand remained strong, with overall private forward sales up and those for its joint ventures increasing by around a half to just under 300 million pounds ($477.69 million) thanks to demand in London.
(Editing by Sarah Young and Louise Heavens)