New figures from the National House Building Council (NHBC) reveal that 115,350 new homes were registered to be built in 2025, up 11% from 2024.
The UK’s largest provider of new home warranties and insurance said that private sector registrations were up 12% to 75,227, compared to 67,265 in 2024.
The rental and affordable sector saw a 10% uplift in the same period, with 40,123 new homes registered in 2025 versus 36,404 in 2024.
Across the UK, all regions apart from London experienced year-on-year growth in registrations, with the West Midlands (+29%) and eastern region (+24%) seeing the highest increases.
London registrations were down 27%, with the NHBC citing delays at the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) and a drop in affordable homes delivery as factors affecting development in the capital.
Figures showed that all house type registrations saw an uplift in 2025, except apartments which were down 2%. The NHBC links this fall to regulatory challenges, scheme viability and the ongoing affordability crisis in London.
In this context, a registration is when a developer registers their intent to build a new home with NHBC.
Daniel Pearce, corporate strategy director at NHBC, said:
“Our latest figures show increased home building activity, although the volume of new homes built remains below long-term averages.
“Whilst there are some tentative signs of conditions improving for developers to build homes, fragile consumer confidence, affordability challenges and economic uncertainty continue to impact demand.”
With an eye on the fall in registrations in the capital, Pearce said: “We’re increasingly hearing of house builders reducing their operations in London, citing regulatory challenges and cost.
“Set against a decline in affordable housing delivery and a backlog of building control applications, unsurprising apartment registrations fell in 2025.”
Pearce stressed the importance of new home quality during any period of growth, saying that the National New Homes Survey, administered by NHBC on behalf of the House Builders Federation, has tracked trends in customer satisfaction since 2004.
“They show that as the number of new home completions increases, the percentage of customers satisfied with the quality of their new home decreases,” he said.
“This trend must be broken as the industry prepares to deliver an increased volume of new homes.”
While NHBC’s registration figures provide a positive outlook for house building activity, new home completions (when a plot is confirmed as ready to be occupied) stood at 122,012 in 2025, 2% down on 2024 (124,272).
Pearce commented:
“A 2% drop in new home completions is marginal, but a vital reminder that industry barriers must be tackled to stand any chance of meeting the government’s promise to build 1.5 million new homes.
“Accelerating planning reforms and addressing the skills shortage will help house builders deliver quality new homes, but resolving affordability challenges for homebuyers remains the key to unlocking demand and boosting house building activity.”
One Response
The number of registrations is one thing, but what is the conversion rate to sales and owners moving in – my understanding from recent data is that social housing properties have had to be put on the open market because social housing organisations didn’t want to buy them – is this true?
The same issue applies to the government’s plans to build 1.5m new homes by the end of this parliament – it doesn’t mean 1.5m will actually be occupied, which should be the target if the aim is to get more people off the streets and more first time buyers on the housing ladder.