Speaking at the Home Builders Federation (HBF), Emily Williams, director of residential research at Savills, said as the government remained unconvinced over the qualities of the Help to Buy scheme, developers must explore other partnerships to help sell their stock.
Sliding sales rates
Williams said the sales rates of public limited company housebuilders have fallen from an average of 0.7 per outlet per week to 0.6 between January 2022 and January 2026.
But these figures disguised “significant challenges”, and the sales rates of SME developers who have less capacity to offer incentives to buyers to purchase a new-build property were even lower.
Williams said over the last six months of 2025, the analysis of new homes data – which includes a wider cross section of housebuilders – showed average sales rates of 0.2% per outlet per week, particularly for smaller developers.
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She said: “This poses a problem for the government’s wide ambition for delivery.
“If [builders] aren’t seeing the route to market [for buyers], why on earth would they invest in bringing sites through the planning system?
“It doesn’t matter what the theoretical capacity is if there isn’t the cash flow to bring those sites forward.”
There was a ‘step change’ in sales rates before 2022 and after, she added, which was not just down to mortgage rates.
“It’s down to the lack of new-build buyer support scheme at scale,” added Williams.
She acknowledged that schemes such as the mortgage guarantee scheme had helped buyers, but added that “it doesn’t give people a reason to choose new build over what is available in the second-hand market, and that is a real challenge facing the people delivering new-build product[s] for private sale”.
Despite analysis presented by Savills to the Treasury showing that 375,000 households currently in the private rented sector could afford to buy a home with an equity loan scheme, the government remains unconvinced.
Earlier in the conference, housing minister Steve Reed said Help to Buy had had an inflationary effect on house prices. He also told housebuilders he wanted them to stop sitting on sites that had been approved by planning officials and build quicker.
Looking to new partnerships
Williams said that in the absence of a national new-build buyer support scheme, builders should look for buying partners in the build to rent sector or for-profit registered providers of social housing, rather than housing associations that are not for profit.
According to Savills’ Q4 build to rent market update, nearly £2.7bn was invested in the sector. This was the highest single quarter of investment on record and represented more investment than the full-year totals of 2016, 2018 and 2019.
For-profit registered providers, said Williams, were another ‘route to market’ for builders.
These companies currently owned 1% of the stock of affordable homes but have funded the delivery of 13% of the affordable homes that have been built over the last three years. She added that they have ambitious to increase their delivery.
By 2030, according to a Savills survey, the appetite of for-profit registered providers to buy new homes is equivalent to 40% of the number of affordable homes that have been delivered over the last five years.
Williams continued: “A lot of these companies are in the early stages of set-up so that don’t have their own construction capacity. They are looking for partners to deliver that investment ambition with them.”
