Outrage As Help-To-Buy Boosts Persimmon Profits To £1bn

Housebuilder Persimmon made a record-breaking £1bn profit last year – equal to more than £66,000 on every one of the homes it sold – with almost half of its house sales made through the taxpayer-funded help-to-buy scheme. The builder, which sparked widespread public and political outrage for attempting to pay its former chief executive Jeff Fairburn a bonus of £110m, posted pre-tax profits of £1.09bn. The huge profit – the biggest ever made by a UK housebuilder – means Persimmon banked £66,265 from every one of the 16,449 homes it sold last year. The average selling price was just over £215,000. The profit from each house it sells has nearly tripled since 2013, when the government introduced the help-to-buy scheme. Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/26/persimmon-profits-help-to-buy-scheme