Persimmon growth outlook: what flat output means for project teams and costs
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Persimmon reports 2025 completions up 12% to 11,905 homes, with private units at 9,830 and partnership homes at 2,075, but expects 2026 output to be only “not much more than 12,000” amid flat market conditions and affordability constraints. Average private selling prices rose 5% to £301,000 and partnership prices 4% to £168,000, while underlying build cost inflation is forecast to match 2025 levels. Doubling of landfill tax from April 2026 and ongoing registered provider weakness are flagged as key cost and demand pressures for future schemes.
Technical Brief
- Persimmon is planning for underlying build cost inflation in 2026 to match 2025 levels.
- Landfill tax on construction waste will double from April 2026, with further annual uplifts expected.
- Vertical integration is being used as a primary cost-control mechanism across Persimmon’s housing delivery chain.
- Fewer bulk sales are in the 2026 order book, reducing forward visibility for large multi-unit releases.
- Ongoing weakness in the registered provider market is expected to constrain partnership housing demand in 2026.
- Early results from Persimmon’s Boxing Day marketing campaign indicate stronger-than-expected private buyer engagement.
- Recent mortgage rate reductions are improving credit availability, but Persimmon still flags affordability as a binding constraint.
- Final audited results for the year to 31 December 2025 are scheduled for release on 10 March 2026.
Our Take
Persimmon’s move to deploy Nexus ReGen’s Materials Exchange Platform across its UK operations suggests that the forecast slowdown in growth will coincide with a push to cut soils and aggregates disposal costs ahead of landfill tax charges doubling from April 2026, which could help protect margins even if volumes soften.
Within our 411-item Infrastructure corpus, Persimmon is one of the more frequently recurring UK housebuilders in sustainability-tagged coverage, signalling that its waste, materials and carbon strategies are increasingly material to how investors and local authorities assess its project bids.
The presence of Persimmon alongside Cruden and institutional backers like BGF, Barclays, HSBC and NatWest in late-2025 coverage indicates that UK housebuilding remains investable, but the 12% completions increase and selling price uplifts here are likely to set a high comparative bar for peers facing the same 2026 tax and cost headwinds.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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