(Adds CEO comments)
LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) - House builder Taylor Wimpey said it benefited from a strengthening property marketacross Britain in the first half, helping sales rates and pricescome in at the top end of its expectations.
The company completed 5,766 homes, an increase of 11 percentin the six months to end-June, it said in a trading update onMonday. The average selling price of completions rose to about206,000 pounds ($350,500) from 188,000 pounds a year ago.
Taylor Wimpey, which builds homes across Britain, said itexpected its operating profit margin to improve to about 16percent, from 13.1 percent in the same period a year ago, and itremained on track to deliver an increase of at least 300 basispoints for the year.
Chief Executive Pete Redfern said steps by the Bank ofEngland to keep a cap on borrowers taking out mortgages theymight struggle to afford when interest rates rise were stoppingthe market overheating.
He said accelerating price growth in London was alsomoderating, while price gains in other parts of the country werestarting to catch up with the capital.
"More growth in the south carried on in the first couple ofmonths of 2014," he said. "Today we are seeing broadly the samegrowth across both markets, probably because the market outsideLondon have continued to pick up and the London market hasn'tgone backwards but the rate of selling price growth has slowed."
Data from lender nationwide last week showed that Londonhouse prices soared 26 percent over the past year, the biggestannual jump since 1987.
Shares in Taylor Wimpey, which builds about 9 percent of itsnew homes within the M25 motorway that rings London, weretrading down 1.8 percent at 115 pence at 1005 GMT.
($1 = 0.5877 British Pounds) (Reporting by Paul Sandle, Editing by Li-mei Hoang)