Developers dip into £200bn land bank to bring more homes to market

The latest analysis by West One Loans, a leading provider of property finance and specialist mortgages, has revealed that the nation’s biggest housebuilders have been utilising their £200bn landbank to deliver more homes to market in the face of growing buyer demand spurred by improving market confidence and greater mortgage affordability.

West One Loans analysed the latest company reports for eight of the nation’s biggest housebuilders to see which currently boasts the strongest pipeline with respect to their individual landbanks and the value of these plots in the current market.

The government has been vocal in its demands for the nation’s housebuilders to ‘roll up their sleeves’ in order to help achieve the ambitious target of 1.5m new homes by 2029. So much so, it recently announced tough new rules forcing them to commit to delivery time frames to get planning permission, with those caught slacking risking losing their land to local authorities.

However, the latest analysis by West One Loans shows that the majority of the nation’s major housebuilders are already rising to the task, having reduced their landbank pipelines as a result of delivering more homes.

The analysis shows that across eight of the nation’s biggest housebuilders, some 488,620 land bank plots were recorded within their 2024 reports. Based on the current average UK new-build house price of £406,390, this means that the total pipeline of these eight developers alone is worth an estimated £198.6bn.

It’s Bellway that currently boasts the most robust pipeline, with 95,292 land bank plots reported in its 2024 figures, holding an estimated market value of £38.7bn.

Persimmon ranks second, with 82,084 plots in its pipeline worth an estimated £33.4bn, whilst Taylor Wimpey sits third at £32bn in market value across 78,626 landbank plots.

However, whilst these developers have maintained a robust pipeline of plots, further analysis by West One Loans shows that there has been an increase in activity with respect to developing their land banks, no doubt driven by improving market conditions and increasing buyer demand as a result of a stabilising mortgage market.

Across all eight major housebuilders, total land bank volumes have fallen by 3.6% over the last year.

In fact, all but one of the developers analysed by West One Loans has reduced the size of its land bank.

Vestry Group has broken the most ground in this respect, with a -7.9% year on year reduction in land bank volumes. Berkeley Group has seen a -6.8% reduction, whilst Crest Nicholson has seen an annual drop of -6%.

Just Miller Homes has seen an increase in this respect, although a marginal one, with its land bank volumes up by 0.1% on an annual basis.

Co-Head of Short-Term Finance at West One Loans, Thomas Cantor, commented:

“It’s clear that whilst many of the nation’s developers have been sure to maintain a robust pipeline of land bank plots, they have also been pushing forward and breaking ground in order to bring more homes to market to meet growing demand.

This is despite the fact that the current landscape still presents a range of challenges but, as interest rates have stabilised, we’ve seen more housebuilders turn to the specialist finance sector to help them facilitate their ambitions

This has largely taken the form of a greater reliance on bridging in order to help part fund their initial project, as well as utilising development finance in order to exit existing builds in order to push forward with the next.

We’ve seen numerous examples over the last 12 months whereby developers have utilised us to help them in both instances and, finding a finance specialist that can do so will ensure a far smoother process throughout.”

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