One of the UK’s largest housebuilders Persimmon plc has reported a 12% growth in completions in 2025 and expects to deliver underlying profit before tax at the upper end of market expectations.
The trading update, released by Persimmon on January 13 ahead of its final 2025 results, also shows the group’s average selling price increased by 5% in 2025 to £301,000.
Persimmon performed well during 2025, in a challenging market,” said Dean Finch, Group Chief Executive.
“This performance demonstrates the benefit of our sustained investment in recent years, alongside our self-help strategy, broad geographic coverage and increased outlets, to create a differentiated growth platform.
The Group recorded completions of 11,905 homes (2024: 10,664), ahead of market expectations, reflecting the benefits of its expanding outlet base and broad geographic coverage. Private home completions were up 8% to 9,830 (2024: 9,075) with 2,075 partnership homes delivered in the period (2024: 1,589).
Net sales rate per outlet per week excluding bulk sales was up 4% to 0.59 (2024: 0.57). Including bulk sales, the net private sales rate per outlet per week was in line with the prior year at 0.70 (2024: 0.70), with some softening seen in the Build to Rent market in Q4 ahead of the Budget.
Persimmon’s strategic investment in land and planning in recent years enabled it to open approximately 100 new outlets during the year, ending the year with 277 open outlets, a 3% increase from the beginning of the year (2024: 270 outlets).
The value of its forward sales increased 2% to £1.17bn (2024: £1.15bn). Within this, £680m relates to private forward sales (2024: £653m), up 4%.
“This reflects good growth in private sales to owner occupiers, partly offset by a reduction in bulk sales within the order book as a result of the softening in demand seen in Q4,” it said.
“We entered 2026 with a robust order book. While we are not expecting any material improvement in market conditions this year, early indications from our Boxing Day marketing campaign are encouraging. Recent reductions in mortgage rates are helpful for our private customers although we remain mindful of continued affordability constraints. In addition, fewer bulk sales in the order book, and continued challenges in the registered provider market, are likely to slow our growth in these markets in 2026.
At this stage, we expect underlying build cost inflation to be similar to 2025, and we remain in a strong position to manage costs given our unique level of vertical integration.”
