Barratt Developments, Britain’s biggest housebuilder, today unveiled measures to kick start the property market as it axed its final shareholder dividend and reported a 67 per cent slide in pre-tax profits.

The group pledged to pay customers’ stamp duty on purchases up to £500,000 and said it would be launching a part-exchange service normally reserved for the car industry. Anyone looking to buy a new Barratt home can sell their old one to the business at a “fair market value”.

Mark Clare, chief executive of Barratt, said housebuilders had to offer higher incentives given the “considerable uncertainty” about the near-term prospects for the sector.

He said: “We know from research that our customers want low moving costs, help in selling their existing property, and more certainty over the price of their purchase."

The poor health of the market was reflected in full-year profits from the group today.

The heavily-indebted housebuilder, which has spent the summer struggling to put its finances on a better footing, scrapped its final dividend and made writedowns worth £208.4 million on its land and commercial developments.

As a result, pre-tax profit for the 12 months to June 30 fell from £424.8 million last year to £137.3 million. Like its rival, Redrow, Barratt is paying only an interim dividend. Investors received a 12.23p per share payout in May.

The housebuilder, Britain's biggest by volume, said that margins, which have halved during 2008, would continue to slide in 2009, while forward sales in the past four weeks were down 30 per cent on the previous year.

Full-year revenues rose 16.7 per cent to £3.5 billion but like-for-like completions fell by 13.8 per cent.

Despite the problems, Barratt said that it had successfully refinanced its £1.7 billion of debt.

It has entered into a new £400 million three-year revolving credit facility. In addition, it has agreed with its bankers and private placement investors to amend its financial covenants, replacing the interest covenant with a cashflow covenant.

At the same time, the gearing and minimum tangible net worth covenants have been relaxed.

The new covenant package and revolving credit facility have increased the average cost of the group’s borrowings to about 9.75 per cent from August 2008.

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