This was the year that things were supposed to get better. After the horror of soaring build costs and the Liz Truss-assisted spike in interest rates in the years since 2023, the new government – and its much-vaunted return to quiet competence – was presumed to deliver a gradually improving market picture.

Instead, the picture in 2024 and early 2025 – as shown clearly in our data listings on the UK’s top 50 housebuilders – is of a tricky and flat market, one that more recently has started to deteriorate. Bob Weston, chair of Essex-based housebuilder Weston Homes, which reported a loss of £8.6m in the year to July 2024 on falling sales, does not shrink from using the R-word, even though official national statistics show the economy managing anaemic growth. “I’ve been through four recessions in my career,” he says. “I call this a housing recession.

“This is the first where I can’t see anything on the horizon likely to make it get any better.”

The figures from the UK’s top 50 housebuilders, according to their latest reported accounts, show that turnover overall (accounting for inflation) was broadly flat. Profit, meanwhile, was sharply down, with the majority of housebuilders reporting a drop in the number of homes built. Since these full-year figures were published, trading updates and market reports suggest that sentiment has somewhat worsened over the summer, with concern in the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s Budget last month – and potential changes to property taxes – casting a long shadow over market sentiment.

As well as the overall market, the numbers of course highlight which firms have navigated this tricky market most successfully – and which have not. So, what impact has it all had, and what is the outlook for the year ahead?

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