"Taylor Wimpey revalues assets"

I've just stumbled across a shed load of interesting statistics in an FT article of last week:

Between 1989 and 1994, housebuilders wrote off more than £1bn from their balance sheets – nearly a third of the value of their land banks. George Wimpey, which merged with Taylor Woodrow last year, saw its land values collapse by more than 70 per cent between 1989 and 1992*. In contrast, Monday’s £550m adjustment from Taylor Wimpey represents just 13 per cent of its UK plots**. It is taking a further £110m writedown on US and Spanish land.

* Which is what you'd have expected, using the figures here.

** I assume they mean "13 per cent by value", as total book value of all their plots as at 31 December 2007 was £3,879 million. TW own about 42,460 residential plots with detailed planning permission, so that write-down is a laughable £13,000 per plot and there's plenty more writing down ahead... don't forget that the stock exchange is valuing TW's landbank at barely half its book value.