Britain’s largest housebuilders are facing a proposed class action worth up to £4.5bn, with hundreds of thousands of homebuyers claiming they paid inflated prices for new-build homes as a result of alleged anti-competitive behaviour.
The claim, which is set to be filed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal, is being brought by Mark McLaren, a former parliamentary and legal affairs manager at consumer group Which?, against Barratt Redrow, Bellway, Berkeley Group, Bloor Homes, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey, Vistry Group and its Countryside Partnerships division.
The action is being pursued on behalf of more than 700,000 people who purchased new-build homes in Great Britain between October 2015 and 24 June 2026.
The proposed claim follows an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into allegations that major housebuilders exchanged commercially sensitive information over a two-year period ending in February 2024. The regulator closed its investigation after the companies agreed to pay £100m towards affordable housing programmes and accepted legally binding commitments not to share commercially sensitive information in future.
McLaren’s claim alleges the exchange of information reduced competition between the firms, resulting in consumers paying more than they should have for new-build properties. It argues the impact on house prices stretches back to October 2015.
Represented by competition law firms Geradin Partners and Hausfeld, McLaren estimates affected homeowners could each be entitled to between £3,100 and £6,200 in compensation, giving the claim a potential total value of between £2.2bn and £4.5bn.
McLaren said: “Buying a home is one of the biggest financial commitments most of us will make. If, as seems to
be the case, housebuilders shared sensitive pricing and sales information with one another instead of competing properly, homeowners across Great Britain may well have been left out of pocket as a result.
“This claim is about standing up for those buyers and ensuring that compensation is delivered to those who deserve it.”
Patrick Teague, partner at Geradin Partners, commented: “We are pleased to have been instructed by Mark McLaren to bring these proceedings, together with our co-counsel at Hausfeld. The claim raises important issues about competition in the new-build housing market, and we look forward to assisting the Tribunal in determining those issues and, if the claim succeeds, securing compensation for affected homeowners.”
Scott Campbell, Partner at Hausfeld & Co. LLP, added: “For most homeowners, bringing an individual claim simply isn’t realistic, as the cost and complexity put it out of reach. That’s why this collective action is so important. It provides a practical route for hundreds of thousands of consumers to seek compensation where they may otherwise have had no way of doing so.”
Comments (2)
Having been undertaking Help to Buy valuations for over a decade now, I think there’s a bigger scandal waiting to happen and that’s miss-selling of Help to Buy loans. I’ve spoken to many clients who took out such loans and the vast majority (indeed only 1 person said they were happy) didn’t believe they were properly advised when they took out the loans, in particular redemption costs, interest on uplift in value, etc… Over to you legal bods.
This blames the wrong people. A law firm is suing Britain’s biggest housebuilders for up to £4.5bn, saying buyers paid too much because the firms shared pricing information with each other. But that’s not what really pushed prices up.
For years, interest rates were kept incredibly low, the cheapest borrowing in modern British history. On top of that, the government ran a scheme called Help to Buy, which only worked on new-build homes. It gave buyers an equity loan, meaning the government lent them money to put down a bigger deposit. That meant buyers could suddenly borrow more and spend more, specifically on new houses. At the same time, there weren’t enough new homes being built because of planning rules, also controlled by government.
Put those together and you get buyers with more money chasing a limited number of homes. Of course prices went up. The housebuilders didn’t create that situation, they just sold houses into the market the government built for them. Some of them even said so themselves, in their own company reports, where Help to Buy was named as a reason their sale prices went up.
Then Liz Truss happened, rates spiked, mortgages reset, and the same buyers who’d been encouraged into that market suddenly found their dream home was a financial nightmare. That’s the real story of who hurt buyers, and it isn’t a couple of years of housebuilders comparing notes.
The CMA did find that some firms shared information they shouldn’t have, over a two-year period. That might have nudged prices a little. It doesn’t explain nine years of rising prices, which is what this lawsuit is now claiming. This has the smell of ambulance-chasing opportunism, find a regulator finding, attach the biggest number you can to it, and let the lawsuit do the rest. If you want to know who really made new homes expensive and then made owning one painful, look at the policy decisions, not the people who sold houses into the market those decisions created.