Housebuilder Vistry to cut up to 100 jobs as sales fall

HOUSEBUILDER Vistry is cutting up to 100 jobs and slowing down its building speed after a wave of cancelled sales triggered by the mortgage crisis.

The FTSE 250 company announced cost cutting as it confirmed that sales had fallen to £1bn at the end of 2022, down from £1.3bn the year before.

Earl Sibley, chief operating officer at Vistry, said the sales were hit by the crisis in the mortgage market at the end of last year, triggered by September’s mini-budget.

“In the last quarter of 2022 we saw quite a few cancellations, so now we are building at the rate that we can see will sell,” he said.

As well as slowing building and cutting jobs, Vistry has already closed four sales offices. The company bought rival housebuilder Countryside for £1.25bn last year and the company said it was analysing spending across the board following the merger.

News of the cost cutting came as official figures confirmed house prices have fallen for the first time in a year.

Average prices dipped to £294,910 in November 2022, down 0.3pc from the peak of £295,864 a month previously, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Gabriella Dickens, an economist with consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that higher mortgage rates and higher prices meant falling prices were likely to continue into 2023.

She said: “We think house prices will continue to fall, at least over the first half of the year.

“We continue to expect a peak-totrough fall in house prices equal to around 8pc, reversing around one third of the increase since the pandemic.”

Halifax has also forecast that prices will drop by 8pc over the coming year, while Savills forecast a 10pc drop. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the Government’s official forecaster, is more optimistic, estimating a 6.1pc fall.

Prices fell by 0.2pc in England in November, ONS figures show. They dropped 1.2pc in Scotland and 1.6pc in Wales, though they increased by 4.1pc in Northern Ireland.

London prices rose 0.1pc in a month to reach an average of £542,311.