Persimmon, one of Britain’s largest housebuilders, has reported another year of increasing output but insists that government intervention for first-time buyers is critical for achieving ambitious national housebuilding targets.
The group built 10,664 flats and houses last year—7 per cent more than in 2023—and expects to deliver between 11,000 and 11,500 new homes in 2025. However, this remains well below the 15,000 homes produced in 2022, before mortgage rates surged and undermined buyer demand.
Chief executive Dean Finch argues that if Westminster and the Treasury are truly intent on delivering 1.5 million homes by the end of 2029, they must look beyond planning reforms and address demand-side challenges.
“This is the first time in 60 years there has been no government assistance for first-time buyers,” Finch said, adding that the lack of initiatives such as Help to Buy could stall homeownership aspirations.
To remedy the deposit hurdle, Finch has proposed that banks collaborate on a “shared equity scheme”—a mechanism where a loan, supplementary to the main mortgage, helps buyers raise a deposit. “This was always the biggest obstacle to people getting on the property ladder,” he said.
In the first two months of 2025, Persimmon was selling 0.67 homes per week at each of its 270 sites—an improvement of 14 per cent on early 2024, yet still 30 per cent below its pre-pandemic rate of one sale per site per week. Nevertheless, stronger performance and an uptick in average selling prices (up 3 per cent year on year) helped drive a 16 per cent rise in annual revenues for 2024, reaching £3.2 billion. Pre-tax profits also edged 2 per cent higher to £359.1 million.
Investors welcomed the news, lifting shares in Persimmon by 2.2 per cent to £11.97. Parallel gains were observed among several competing firms, with Barratt Redrow, Taylor Wimpey, and Berkeley Group all seeing moderate share price increases.
While the Conservative government has pledged 1.5 million homes by 2029 and begun overhauling planning rules, Finch believes supply-side changes alone won’t suffice. The company supports a combination of more efficient planning and incentives targeted at first-time buyers to stimulate homeownership.
“We’re, at best, down 30 per cent from where we used to be on sales rates—and even then we were well short of the 300,000 houses-a-year target,” Finch explained.
