When Malcolm Harris, the chief executive of Bovis Homes, gives warning on sales volumes, Middle England should take heed.

If there were ever a typical homebuilder catering to Mr and Mrs Average and their 2.4 children, then Bovis would be the closest fit with its array of neat, relatively affordable detached houses.

Mr Harris gave warning in July that the company’s ability to meet its full-year targets depended on the arrival of the traditional autumn sales season.

He admitted today that the autumn season has failed to materialise.

While like-for-like sales prices have held up, there simply are not as many buyers as Bovis had hoped for.

Volumes will now be slightly down on last year and Mr Harris said that profits would fall accordingly.

Today analysts lopped an average 7 per cent off their forecasts for 2007 pre-tax profits forecast for Bovis, taking them down from £139 million to £129 million.

But Bovis’s woes are a warning both for the new homes market and the wider residential market.

Problems afflicting Bovis are bound to be felt by rivals.

Last week Taylor Wimpey said that the UK housing market was in the doldrums.

House-hunters do not tend to look at only one homebuilder — they shop around.

The tendency to delay making a purchase is therefore likely to be felt across the sector.

Buyers of Bovis Homes will include a large proportion of second-time buyers. If they are not buying, that is also a sign that their own sales could be stagnating.

Bovis has not reported any decline in sales prices but it may only be a matter of time before it and other housebuilders have to cut prices, or at least enhance sales incentives, to make up for any price cuts potential buyers have taken on sales of their existing homes.

Long-tipped as a takeover target, Bovis’s short-term sales problems may at last make the company vulnerable.

With a five-year landbank, potential predators, such as Persimmon, may be willing to buy into the long-term recovery in the UK housing market by buying Bovis on the cheap today rather than wait for its stock to recover next spring.

Bovis shareholders should brave the storm.

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