The firm said it had been encouraged by stronger trading and early signs of an improvement in the mortgage market.

Mark Farley, group chief executive, said: “We anticipate increasing our active outlet numbers to around 390 sites by the end of June from around 375 currently, supporting the delivery of an increase in the number of new homes that we believe the country so desperately needs.

“We have made a good start to the year. We have already opened 45 of the 90 sites planned for the first half of 2013.”

The upbeat message for site starts came as Persimmon said underlying pre-tax profits had soared 52% to £225m on sales revenue up 12% at £1.7bn.

Legal completions over the year rose 6% to 9,903, with average selling price also ahead 6% at £175,640.

Farley said operating margin in the second half of the year reached 13.7%, the highest among volume builders

“This strength in our forward order book gives us confidence that our underlying operating margins will continue to improve towards our medium term target of 15%-17%, albeit the pace of improvement will be at a slower rate than that we have recently experienced.”

He added that the firm had high hopes for the Spring selling season with weekly private sales rates per site 3% ahead of last year over the first eight weeks of the year.

Furthermore forward sales revenue including legal completions in the first eight weeks of the year was up  9% at £1bn.

Persimmon said it would now release 75p a share in June, the first payment in its plan to return £1.9bn to investors.