黑洞社区

No suppliers have decided to stop working with Vistry after it asked them to lower their prices last autumn, the housebuilder has told 黑洞社区.

The firm sparked an outcry after it wrote to contractors to ask for a 10% price cut. Vistry鈥檚 partnerships boss Stephen Teagle later defended the move, telling 黑洞社区 it would lead to greater efficiency and more work in the longer term for contractors.

Teagle did not confirm the levels at which firms had cut their prices by but repeated earlier claims that talks had been 鈥減ositive鈥�.

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

鈥淏ut 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.鈥�

Asked if any firm had refused to lower its prices, or whether any have stopped working with Vistry as a result of the request, he added: 鈥淣o. We鈥檝e managed to maintain our relationships with our suppliers, it鈥檚 a symbiotic relationship.鈥�

Teagle said Vistry is active on 350 sites with around 10 or 12 firms on each of its jobs. 鈥淵ou can see the scale of the conversations we鈥檝e had,鈥� he added.

He said: 鈥淚f 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.鈥�

Teagle also 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.

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

Teagle said more detail is likely to be confirmed by the time it releases its annual results in the middle of March.

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Teagle said he expects Vistry to be delivering 20,000 homes a year by the 鈥渓atter part of 2025, going into 2026鈥�. This would exceed the 17,000 homes the UK鈥檚 biggest housebuilder Barratt delivered last year.

鈥淚 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,鈥� he added.

鈥淣o 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.鈥�

In a trading update last week, the number of homes Vistry completed fell more than 5% last year to 16,124.

It added that it is expected to post adjusted pre-tax profit of around 拢418.4m for the year to 31 December, ahead of the 拢410m it said it expected three months ago.