Vistry set to announce more huge forward sale deals ‘within weeks’

The boss of Vistry’s partnerships business said the housebuilder is set to announce more forward sales deals of 1,000 homes or more in the next few weeks as it aims to ramp up delivery to more than 20,000 homes a year.

Stephen Teagle told Housing Today the firm, which is merging its traditional housebuilding arm into its partnerships business, is planning to supplement its strategy of small deals with partners such as housing associations with large “portfolio deals” of 1,000 homes or more.

Under these bulk deals, Vistry forward sells a large number of units to an investor or developer. It has already announced an £819m deal with Blackstone-owned Sage and Leaf Living to build nearly 3,000 homes.

Teagle said: “I would expect us to be announcing framework or portfolio arrangements within the next few weeks.“

Teagle said more detail is likely to be confirmed by an update in March but he expects the firm to have announced deals of 1,000 homes or more by then.

Vistry has 8,500 plots out of 32,000 that have been “targeted for pre-sale” as “quickly as possible” said Teagle.

Teagle said he expects Vistry to be delivering 20,000 homes a year by the “latter part of 2025, going into 2026”. This would exceed the 17,000 homes Britain’s biggest developer Barratt delivered last year.

“I want to us to challenge the orthodoxy that exists in the country about it being difficult to deliver more than 20,000 homes a year”, said Teagle..

“No other business previously has ever existed in the UK at scale that delivers on a partnerships platform and delivers tenure choice in the way that our business model does.”

A trading update last week however showed Vistry’s development has fallen 5.4% year on year to 16,124 completions.

But Teagle said this was due to a slowdown in sales in the traditional speculative housebuilding activity that Vistry is moving away from.

Teagle also confirmed that hundreds of suppliers and subcontractors have agreed to lower their prices and none have walked away from Vistry Partnerships after the housebuilder requested price reductions.

Vistry hit the headlines last year after writing to firms to request a 10 per cent reduction. Teagle would not confirm the levels of reduction ultimately agreed but said talks have been positive and firms have agreed to cut prices.

He said firms have realised Vistry can offer “forward visibility of work” and opportunities for efficiencies.

He said: “I completely accept that having a conversation about cost efficiencies and cost reductions initially needs to be explored properly and you need to have a conversation and put it in to context for the partners.

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“But having gone through that process over the last three or four months, those conversations have been very positive with both the subcontractor and for ourselves in terms of delivering schemes and maintaining production.”

When asked if any firm has refused to lower prices, or whether any have stopped working with Vistry as a result of the request, Teagle gave an emphatic “no”. “We’ve managed to maintain our relationships with our suppliers, it’s a symbiotic relationship”, he said.

Teagle said Vistry is active on 350 sites, and there are around 10 or 12 trades on each site. “You can see the scale of the conversations we’ve had”.

Teagle said suppliers realise there is a difference between a partnerships business and a traditional housebuilding business that “closes down” activity during difficult periods.

He said: “If one of our suppliers can see that we are putting in place a portfolio deal to deliver 2,500 homes, they can see a manufacturing or supply position which will allow them to gain some efficiencies.”

Vistry last week said it is on course to post adjusted pre-tax profit of around £418.4m for the year to 31 December, ahead of the £410m it said it expected three months ago.