房屋建筑商的股票因伯纳姆市议会的住房计划而大幅上涨

Tuesday 25 August 2026 9:06 am | Updated: Tuesday 25 August 2026 9:07 am

Shares in the UK’s biggest housebuilders rose sharply on Tuesday morning after Andy Burnham revealed plans to spend an initial £10bn on affordable housing.

In an announcement on Monday evening, the Prime Minister said the initial funding package would be used to build “thousands more quality council, social and affordable homes”.

The funding would be earmarked to build “genuinely affordable homes, most of them for social rent, in the places where families are waiting longest,” he added.

The announcement triggered a rise in the shares of London’s biggest listed housebuilders, which have been struggling amid a slowdown in Britain’s housing market in recent months.

Beleagured FTSE 250 firm Vistry jumped more than 12 per cent to 301p in early trading, while rival housebuilders Barratt Redrow and Persimmon led the FTSE 100.

Vistry told investors the government has handed it £350m to build 3,000 affordable homes as part of the initial £10bn tranche of funding.

This buoyant reaction to the government’s housebuilding plans comes despite a watering-down of Burnham’s initial plans for the scheme.

He had previously said that all of the Labour’s £39bn social and affordable homes programme – of which this £10bn is the first part – should be “dedicated to council homes”.

But today’s announcement will see the money spent on a mix of subsidised housing types, in line with previous commitments by Burnham’s predecessor Sir Keir Starmer.

The £10bn in funding set out on Monday night will be spent on building 70,000 homes outside London, with about 60 per cent of this money earmarked for social rented housing.

A further £6bn will be allocated for housebuilding in the capital at a later date.

Vistry grant is ‘much-needed stimulus’

The rise in housebuilding shares comes after a series of warnings that falling demand for housing and rising costs caused by the Iran war are hammering their finances.

Vistry, which took the biggest boost from the funding plans, has become the UK’s most-shorted stock in recent months. Last month, it spooked investors by posting a £30bn first-half loss in an unscheduled trading update.

“We are delighted that Homes England has made this significant announcement that will create over 73,000 new homes and provide Vistry, its partners and the wider sector with a much-needed stimulus,” chief executive Adam Daniels said.

Vistry – which mostly works in partnership with housing providers like local councils – has said it hopes to play a large role in Burnham’s vision for “the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period”.

Housebuilders halt spending

Barratt Redrow, which gained nearly one per cent on Tuesday morning, has said it is cutting back on land-buying in response to “heightened macroeconomic uncertainty”.

Shares in FTSE 250-listed Berkeley jumped two per cent in early trading, to 3,594p. In April, the housebuilder saw its share price plummet after it halted land-buying completely in response to an “unprecedented increase in cost and regulation”.

Housebuilders including Bellway and Barratt Redrow have urged Burnham to cut stamp duty for first-time buyers in a bid to boost demand for new homes.