- Our core business is building and selling homes – and to create profitability. In a demanding market, it is even more important to make it simple and attractive for customers to buy a new home, state Ole Feet, CEO of Block Watne and Mikael Olsson, CEO of Myresjöhus and SmålandsVillan.

 How is Block Watne adapting to the market situation?

 Almost 90 per cent of our turnover comes from housing projects under our own name, in which we control the entire value chain – from buying properties to sale, building and hand-over to the customer. This requires us having the flexibility to adjust along the way, and select the products the market demands and which are efficient to produce. The ideal housing project involves several sub-projects which are developed over time, and the types of housing can be detached, terraced and small apartment buildings. Affordable and spaceefficient family homes are what we currently are building most of. These products are popular regardless of the state of the economy, because they fulfil a real housing need.

 Realising sales has been a challenge in 2008. What is the key to success?

 We have focused on selling completed and nearly completed homes, which has been important to reduce capital investments and maintain our margins. We also believe it is important to have a certain stock of homes which are ready to move into, because customers in the current market want to be able to take occupation as soon as they have sold their existing home.

- When we throughout the autumn of 2008 experienced that customers were having problems with bridging loans due the banks’ highly restrictive lending policies, we introduced a five year interest rate guarantee, double home insurance and trained our sales personnel in financial consultancies. A large part of our homes have a universal design in accordance with Husbanken’s rules, which means we can offer Husbank financing for many of our projects.

- Local marketing activities combined with the Internet have shown to be very effective and will be continued in 2009. The first few months of 2009 have been positive, with low interest rates and better access to credit giving increased sales. We have a trimmed organisation and good products. We have cautious optimism for 2009.

 The need for new housing in Sweden is significant, yet there is a lot of competition for the same customers. How will Myresjöhus and SmålandsVillan tackle this?

 Myresjöhus targets the more established families who set high standards for their home and want individual design. Whilst SmålandsVillan’s customers are often first-time buyers, and more price sensitive. Our competitive advantage is that we have known brands, lots of experience and continuous product development. We can sustain the latter because we have in-house resources in the form of architects, development staff and production facilities.

- In a declining market, we find that the simple and reasonably-priced houses are those which sell best. Consequently, Myresjöhus launched two new house collections in 2008 – the “Effect Houses” which are production-efficient low-energy houses and the “Skåne Houses”, specially developed for southern part of Sweden. SmålandsVillan introduced two new house types, and we can also offer a “Do it yourself” concept for customers who want to save money by building and fitting out themselves. And in January, we launched the Villa 2009 campaign house, which has already proved a success. We also have high expectations for our joint project with the Norwegian business – the Hetlandhus collection. The Hetlandhus house types are built as modules on SmålandsVillan’s production facilities. In this way the Norwegian and Swedish businesses are exploiting products, competence and resources across the borders.

- Thanks to intensive sales work with the emphasis on local activities, efficient operations and high productivity, we managed to achieve higher turnover and profit in 2008 than in 2007, even though sales were significantly lower. This confirms that the product portfolio is attractive.

- In 2009, we will benefit from the extensive downsizing we had to perform to reduce costs. The cost base is now much lower and we can see that sales are on the rise again. Surveys show that more than 70 per cent of the population wants to live in their own home. We are one of the few house builders which operate nationwide, and we have the products and competence to ensure success.