I just explained that Britain has been moving structurally southwards.
You’re imagining a scenario where national population growth is perfectly distributed to where houses are - what’s actually happening is that some places are shrinking or steady, and other places (London and the SE) have been growing a lot. You need to build homes for the growth in the national population and you need to build additional homes in London and the SE for the people moving to these regions from the rest of the UK and you need to continually upgrade or replace elements of the housing stock nationally that are no longer fit for purpose in 2023.
Increasing the supply of housing is always going to decrease the price. The only reason you’ve cited for not increasing the supply is your fantasy scenario where a country suffering from historically low levels of housebuilding might somehow find itself in the midst of a Chinese-style construction bubble (and at a time of tightening monetary policy FFS…) I can’t understand why you’re against the one thing that is proven to decrease prices. An affordability crisis and a supply crisis are the same thing.
I just explained that Britain has been moving structurally southwards.
You’re imagining a scenario where national population growth is perfectly distributed to where houses are - what’s actually happening is that some places are shrinking or steady, and other places (London and the SE) have been growing a lot. You need to build homes for the growth in the national population and you need to build additional homes in London and the SE for the people moving to these regions from the rest of the UK and you need to continually upgrade or replace elements of the housing stock nationally that are no longer fit for purpose in 2023.
Increasing the supply of housing is always going to decrease the price. The only reason you’ve cited for not increasing the supply is your fantasy scenario where a country suffering from historically low levels of housebuilding might somehow find itself in the midst of a Chinese-style construction bubble (and at a time of tightening monetary policy FFS…) I can’t understand why you’re against the one thing that is proven to decrease prices. An affordability crisis and a supply crisis are the same thing.
Look, I’m not British, if you want to further prop up a real estate bubble, go ahead.
To see what an actual housing shortage looks like, post-WW2 is a more realistic example.
Housing wasn’t expensive, it just wasn’t available.
Nowadays, there is a lot of available housing, it’s just not affordable.
The correct policy under these circumstances is smarter regulations. That’s what the main policy changes are in my country (the Netherlands).
I guess we will see how the UK and the Netherlands compare in 2030.