Vistry is the laggard in a housebuilding sector full of cracks | Nils Pratley

Group shrinks ambitions from 20,000 to just 12,000 homes a year in an attempt to balance the books

The entire housebuilding sector is in a funk, grumbling about energy prices, the cost of labour, regulation, planning delays, taxes and more, but few have messed up a bad hand quite like Vistry. Three years ago this mashup of the Bovis, Linden and Countryside brands aspired to build 20,000 houses a year, and made itself the darling of the incoming Labour government by betting big on “affordable mixed-tenure housing” in partnership with councils, housing associations and institutional landlords.

The City, too, fell for former executive chair Greg Fitzgerald’s promise that a “capital light” approach of pre-selling homes via a partnership model would yield oodles of cash. The share price doubled to almost £14 between October 2023 and August 2024.