It also reported keen interest in the Government’s NewBuy scheme from customers in a trading update for 2012.

But the house builder joined rival Redrow in warning that mortgages needed to be more competitively priced for it to have a significant impact on uptake.

Taylor Wimpey’s order book, excluding legal completions to date, hit £1.03bn, up 23% from the year end and by 16% from the equivalent point last year.

“This growth has been driven primarily by private reservations and we have achieved further improvement in both pricing and margin in the order book since the year end,” said the houe builder

So far this year the average private net reservation rate is up at 0.62 sales per outlet per week compared to 0.57 in 2011.

“We are achieving margins at the upper end of our expectations through strong performance on new sales outlets and further enhanced returns on those new outlets sourced from our strategic land portfolio,” said the country’s second biggest house builder.