Having considered how private-sector housebuilding has failed to keep up with demand, the consequences arising from it and certain factors that have compounded the situation, the question that remains is 'why?' As the government withdrew from the business of building homes why did the private sector not make up the difference?
A multitude of explanations are proffered from various quarters for the present housing shortage and a multitude of methods for overcoming it are proposed. The argument I will advance here is that while there are many obstacles to higher levels of housebuilding, the most fundamental problem is an over-reliance on private-sector development, in which those with the ability to increase supply also have much to lose from doing so. This has been made worse by very high land prices – a consequence of those factors considered in the last section – which has meant that developers have even more to lose.
Shortage of planning permissions
Much of the present debate about housebuilding focuses on the planning system and the utilisation of land. On one side are those calling for either the relaxation of planning laws or incentives for communities to approve planning applications; on the other are those, often labelled nimbys (‘not in my back yard’), who want to resist residential development encroaching into the green belt or even greenfield sites.
The impact of the planning regime on housing costs was discussed briefly in the previous section, and we will come back to the importance of land prices further on in this section. But there are also concerns that the planning system simply does not yield adequate amounts of land for development. Developers complain that the planning process, overseen by under-resourced councils, is too slow and holds up development.[i]
The Institute of Economic Affairs points to an ‘anti-development bias’ arising from the fact that local residents, to whom councils are accountable, ‘face the disadvantages of development, but not the gains’.[ii] If the community saw more of the financial benefits of development, it is argued, then more planning permissions would be granted. There is also much criticism of the green belt, which artificially restricts the growth of towns and cities to prevent urban sprawl. The Adam Smith Institute has calculated that a million homes could be built on just the 3.7 per cent of the London green belt that is within walking distance of a train station.[iii] There is much to be said for these analyses, and some degree of liberalisation of the planning system and/or incentives for local communities to accept development would be worth pursuing.
There are many more unbuilt housing units with planning permission than there are starts in any given year – and the gap has been growing
However, the problems lie deeper than simply the availability of planning permits and developable land, which should be evident for various reasons. First, the planning system we have today is much the same one that was in place during the most productive period of housebuilding in Britain’s history, during the 1960s. By the same token, 19th century builders failed to construct enough homes even in the absence of anything like a modern planning system. More importantly, there is not actually a shortage of planning permits today.
There are many more unbuilt housing units with planning permission than there are starts in any given year – and the gap has been growing. In early 2014, for example, planning permissions were outstanding in London on 172,000 unbuilt private-sector homes, across 766 sites.[iv] Yet over the ensuing year, there were only 15,790 starts by private developers.[v] That means that less than 10 per cent of the homes with planning permission were even in the process of being built a year later. Each year about 50,000 units are awarded planning permission in the capital (which is a good figure: London is thought to need 49,000 new homes a year to keep pace with demand), but only 21,370 were built in 2014/15.[vi] A backlog of unbuilt planning permissions is growing annually; as of summer 2015, it had reached about 260,000 units waiting to be constructed in London alone.[vii]
There is a similar story nationally. In the year to March 2015, planning permissions for 261,000 new homes were granted in England,[viii] but work only started on 137,740 new homes during the same period (it was 143,560 across the 2015 calendar year).[ix] A degree of timelag between permission being granted and work starting is reasonable and to be expected. Housebuilders suggest there is a two- to three-year lag between approval being granted and homes coming on to the market.[x] But the gap between residential units granted planning permission and the number of homes even being started has widened in recent years. Figure 5 shows how a pronounced upswing in planning approvals since 2011 has corresponded with only a much smaller increase in starts and an even more modest rise in completions. The broken red line charts the backlog in planning permissions that has accumulated since just 2006.
Between 2006 and the end of 2014, there were 369,000 more planning permissions awarded than there were starts. It is notable that between 2008 and 2011 completions ran at a similar level to planning approvals; but that would appear to have been a temporary alignment in the aftermath of the financial crisis which effectively put many developments on hiatus until prices bounced back. Nevertheless, we can see that in 2006 and 2007 – the high-water mark of housebuilding before the crash – the same gap was present that we are returning to now.
Housebuilders hold very much more land than these figures suggest, however. An analysis by The Guardian found that Britain’s nine biggest builders owned or had the option to build on more than 600,000 plots; yet the builders had only constructed 66,881 between them in the most recent financial year.[xi] These figures included land which did not yet have planning permission. Many developers complain about the slow progress their applications make through town hall planning departments. But what of that land that has already got planning permission - why is that not built out more quickly? This is the crucial question now.
Skills shortages
Housebuilders and ministers point to a lack of skills holding up development. This skills shortage in the construction industry is described as ‘the number one challenge for housebuilders’ by David Thomas, chief executive of Barratt Developments, Britain’s biggest builder. There are gaps among bricklayers, plumbers and chartered surveyors, for instance.[xii] This means labour costs have risen; the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) says construction wages have risen by more than 6 per cent in the past year. The housing minister, Brandon Lewis, also regards the shortage of skills as the biggest challenge in housebuilding. ‘If I had all the money I want for housing and all the land I want, I would still have a shortage of skills,’ he said recently.[xiii] This shortage has been exacerbated by the downturn after 2008, when many skilled construction workers left the industry; they have yet to be attracted back in sufficient numbers. While the number of bricklayers required to meet demand between 2013 and 2015 increased by 15,600, the annual award of construction qualifications has fallen by 10,000 a year. This situation is likely to improve in time, however. RICS chief economist Simon Rubinsohn points out that as wages become more attractive skilled workers and school leavers should be enticed into the construction industry in greater numbers.[xiv]
Even if the skills gap were plugged, not enough homes would be built
There are good proposals already for dealing with this problem, if the government was inclined to tackle it. Frank Field MP, in a recent Civitas pamphlet, has called for the creation of a series of skills academies to provide the numbers of bricklayers and other construction workers to sustain housebuilding at the necessary levels. This could be achieved by scaling up the work of private training providers who are already training bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters, roofers, electricians and plumbers in just 10 weeks, who could then begin work for an ‘improvement year’, after which they would be awarded certification by government-backed inspectors.[xv] Lord Baker’s university technical colleges (UTCs) are also pioneering a new vocational approach to secondary education which holds out the prospect of very many more school-leavers entering the workplace with training in areas including construction.[xvi]
The apparent skills shortage provides ministers and builders with an easy explanation for the under-supply of housing, but in doing so they divert attention from more fundamental problems that need to be resolved. Even if the skills gap were plugged, not enough homes would be built, for reasons which we will turn to now.
Landbanking
Housebuilders frequently and vociferously deny that they hoard land, notwithstanding the huge amounts that they hold in their possession.[xvii] They stress that they need a guaranteed pipeline of land for their business model. Developers also cite obstacles in the conditions attached to planning permissions.
But the question of landbanking is not confined to builders. In fact, many of those planning permissions cited above are not yet in the hands of builders and so the first and most obvious challenge is to ensure that they are. Many are held by non-building organisations like investment funds, historic landowners or the public sector, who presumably intend to dispose of the land to a building company at some indeterminate point in the future. In 2012, almost half (45 per cent) of London’s unbuilt planning permissions were attached to land held by non-builders.[xviii] By 2014 this had fallen to 32 per cent, which represented good progress but still meant almost a third of the land in London that had been approved for new homes was not owned by a company that can build them. A report for the Greater London Assembly in 2012 went so far as to say:
'Unlocking London development sites is not about helping builders build, but more to do with changing the ownership of sites controlled by non-builders, i.e. getting them into the hands of firms that build.'[xix]
Why would anybody hold on to their land like this? Landbanking – whether by developers or non-developers – is fuelled by the expectation that land prices will continue to rise.
The effect is one of a positive feedback loop, whereby land price appreciation encourages landbanking, which further promotes land price appreciation
This is compounded by the fact that, research shows, landowners usually sell for financial reasons, not out of necessity – that means they can usually hold on for a bit longer if it would lead to a higher return. The Office of Fair Trading observed in 2008 that if prices are expected to rise in the years ahead then landowners were likely to hold on to their land:
'If landowners anticipate that land values will be higher at some point in the future, they may delay selling land they own. One of the key features of the planning system is that it grants planning permissions rather than obligations. The effect of these two features is that, in practice, a landowner may not be inclined to sell land as soon as it achieves planning permission.'[xx]
The effect here is one of a positive feedback loop, whereby land price appreciation encourages landbanking, which further promotes land price appreciation. This has become a significant issue as residential land prices have – as discussed already – increased rapidly in recent decades. Of course, this dynamic does not just apply to land with planning permission: the owner of any land that has the prospect of residential development at some point in the future has little prospect to sell sooner rather than later if prices are expected to continue rising.
Landbanking is not the preserve of the profit-making private sector either, but can be observed across the public sector. In 2012, government bodies (by definition non-builders) retained ownership of 31 of the capital’s 524 planning permissions for residential development.[xxi] One of the problems encountered by the 2010 Coalition government in its drive to sell off surplus public-sector land was that individual departments, under tight budgetary pressures, were unwilling to accept lower valuations for sites than they had been hoping for.[xxii] Progress by NHS Trusts in particular was initially very slow, despite the encouragement of the Department of Health. It turned out that ‘many of the trusts wanted to retain land because they considered that it would increase in value over the next four years’.[xxiii] As taxpayers, we might be pleased that NHS managers were seeking to maximise the returns on public assets – but the effect is to restrict the supply of land for new homes.
Absorption rates
Even if we accept that developers do not hoard land, it is also the case that they do not build it out as quickly as is physically possible. Studies show that developers usually build out any one individual scheme at a rate of no more than 100 homes a year, irrespective of the number of permissioned units on the site they are developing. The average is approximately 50 a year.[xxiv] An academic analysis of build-out rates in 2008 (before the crisis, so in good economic conditions) described how the typical housebuilder aimed to build and sell one unit per week; their business plans were based on this scenario from the outset of a project.[xxv] This was the same for any site – whether it had permission for 50 homes or 500, the annual release of new homes into the market would be around 50. There was a slightly better average of 68 starts per site in London in 2011, and even 85 in 2013; but in a best case scenario a site of 500 homes would take at least five years to build out.[xxvi]
Builders cannot afford to flood the local market in such a way that it reduces prices
These figures reflect what housebuilders call absorption rates – how quickly the local market can absorb the new properties. The Home Builders Federation describes it like this: ‘Housebuilders can only build at the rate a local market will support. You cannot build out a site for 5,000 houses instantly or indeed put them up for sale in a local market at once.’[xxvii] Jennie Daly, UK land director at Taylor Wimpey, giving evidence to the Lords Economic Affairs Committee recently, explained the situation in greater detail. Asked whether her firm – if it wanted to – could double its rate of housebuilding if the skills and materials were available, she said:
'There are a number of elements that would restrict our ability to double our contribution, or build. You alluded to skills and production limitations, materials and other elements. It would be inappropriate to ignore the fact that we also sell into a market where we don’t know our customer and so we have to look to market absorption. Some areas in robust market areas could be capable of increases, if skills and commodities were available. Other areas where there just isn’t the depth of market then there would be concerns about the over provision into the market and the fact that that would have a distorting effect on the local market, and that would be of concern both to the local market property owners and to ourselves.'[xxviii]
What is meant by this is that builders cannot afford to flood the local market in such a way that it reduces prices. This is a function of the housebuilders’ exposure to the land market. In order to purchase land on which to build, a developer must submit the highest bid. This winning bid must be predicated on selling houses at the current market level or higher – any lower and a rival developer would bid higher and take the land. Thus current house prices in the local vicinity determine how much the developer must sell their houses for if they are to turn a profit.[xxix] For this reason the developer can never release so many homes into the local market that prices fall, and it is virtually impossible for a developer to adopt a price-cutting strategy. A developer who tried to sell homes more quickly and/or more cheaply would either turn a loss (on the price of the land) or fail to secure the land in the first place.
'Homebuilders deliver new homes as fast as they can sell them, not as fast as they can build them' - OFT
This dynamic was described by the Office of Fair Trading in a report published in 2008. It wanted to know why, in the years up to 2007, a period of significant growth, rising land and house prices, strong demand and easy credit there was not a corresponding increase in the number of homes being built by homebuilders. Initially suspicious that anti-competitive practices were at play, the OFT concluded in fact that the housebuilding process was working as was to be expected.[xxx] That is to say, developers were building homes as quickly as it was economically viable to do so:
'…the homebuilder will build at a rate which will satisfy the demand in the local market at or above the existing price levels… inevitably a homebuilder attempting to offer cheaper homes will be outbid for land by a homebuilder selling homes at the prevailing market price. It is for this reason that build out rates, or absorption rates as they are known… are dictated by local market conditions and not by the maximum technical speed at which homes can be built. Homebuilders deliver new homes as fast as they can sell them, not as fast as they can build them.'[xxxi] (my italics)
So when housebuilders talk about building rates being based on ‘the depth of market’ they mean that they are based on the ability of the local market to maintain current price levels even when there is an increase in supply. Houses are built and sold into the market as quickly as people can buy them at or above current prices.
'The release of houses is managed on a site-by-site basis by builders themselves to achieve the target sales rates underpinning earlier bids for land'
Another study, by academics David Adams and Chris Leishman of the University of Glasgow, suggested that build-out rates were designed into a project from the start and would not increase even if demand turned out to be greater than anticipated. If the sales environment exceeded expectations, ‘prices are quickly increased or incentives dropped to bring the sales rate back on target’; no developer would simply increase the construction rate.[xxxii] If a developer calculated that prices would continue to rise, staggering sales over a longer period would yield greater profits.
'…the release of houses is managed on a site-by-site basis by builders themselves to achieve the target sales rates underpinning earlier bids for land… Developers with cautious build-rate assumptions will benefit from an advantage in terms of the price they can offer landowners assuming that house prices are rising faster than construction costs and the cost of borrowing.'[xxxiii]
If, on the other hand, demand turns out to be worse than expected, prices would only be cut ‘as a last resort’.[xxxiv] If market conditions deteriorated and a development was not yet started it was more likely, Adams and Leishman found, to be delayed or suspended.[xxxv] (It is important to note that this is not a happy scenario for developers either: not only is their investment in abeyance, but if interest rates rise then they will be highly exposed on any finance they have used to fund the development.)
Since the 1970s, housing output has become much more sensitive to prices once more. Stephen Merrett, writing in 1982, observed that in the previous 15 years downward shifts in demand had never brought an annual country-wide fall in house prices. This was because ‘when demand conditions turn sour builders prefer to reduce their output flow, and selling buyers hold their homes off the market where this is feasible’.[xxxvi] A graphic example of this can be seen at the end of the house price boom of the early 1970s. When prices began to fall sharply in 1973 (compounded by the global stock market downturn and then the oil crisis which began in October), builders reduced output abruptly, from 216,000 in 1973 to 106,000 in 1974, the largest peace-time fall in private housing output in British history.[xxxvii] Similarly when the 2008 financial crisis hit, and house prices slumped, housebuilding went into a decline from which it is still yet to fully recover.
Without some kind of overriding incentive or intervention, private-sector developers will never build so many homes that prices will fall
This feature of the private housebuilding industry is not just a contemporary phenomenon. It is a major reason why, as we have seen, housebuilding fluctuated so markedly in the 19th century: speculation would take hold for a while, then confidence would fall and builders would cut output. Peter Kemp, describing how Victorian housebuilding output was subject to ‘cyclical fluctuations, with periodic gluts and shortages’, writes of how:
'…larger speculative builders took into account in their profit calculations the likely effect that their addition to the supply of dwellings in a particular locality would have on the level of rents that could be charged and hence on the amount that landlords would be prepared to pay for the dwellings…'[xxxviii]
The process of peaks and troughs in 19th century housebuilding culminated ultimately in a crash which began in 1903 and from which it still had not recovered by the outbreak of war in 1914.[xxxix] The ‘long Edwardian slump’ saw an enormous 70 per cent decline in output, to the lowest levels for 60 years, alongside a 40 per cent decline in values.[xl]
Building and selling properties quickly rarely makes any sense; flooding the local market with new homes would be entirely inimical to the developers’ business model because it would bring down prices. Supply is calibrated on a site-by-site basis to hold up prices. It would not be fair to blame developers for creating this scenario, however, as it is they who have most to lose if the market turns sour. Conservative build-out rates reflect the extraordinary fragility of the market. This framework has major implications for any ambitions to reduce housing costs while also relying principally on the private sector to build the homes we need. It suggests that, without some kind of overriding incentive or intervention, private-sector developers will never build so many homes that prices will fall.
Land prices
As discussed already, land prices have grown enormously since the 1950s, but particularly over the past couple of decades – much faster than labour and materials costs. This has meant that the cost of residential land has risen significantly as a proportion of the build costs of every property built. One estimate suggests it has risen from just over a quarter to more than two-thirds over the past half a century.[xli] This exacerbates the tendency towards conservative build-out rates because it means so much of the developer’s profit margin is now determined by the price they have paid for the land, while the higher it is, the more developers have to lose if prices fall. As well as causing developers to build more slowly, as a hedge, high land values create a barrier to entry into the housebuilding market. This has had the effect of keeping out many SME builders who lack the assets needed to enter the market.[xlii]
Even among those larger developers who can compete, however, such is the frenzy for residential land in some hotspots that sites can be purchased at prices that are initially unprofitable, the purchaser gambling on the likelihood that the land will become economical to build on at some point in the future. This can be another reason why land, ripe for residential development, in fact stands idle for too long. As the consultants Molior reported to the GLA:
'…the industry feels that vendor price aspirations definitely lead to sites lying dormant – when the vendor wants too much for their site either the site does not sell, or the site is sold but then does not get developed.'[xliii]
This strong correlation between high land values and low construction rates is not peculiar to Britain but has been observed internationally.[xliv] Fundamentally, very high land values deter rapid housebuilding because they leave developers so much more exposed to price fluctuations, and so the enterprise is much more perilous financially.
Conclusion
There is not, strictly speaking, a shortage of land on which to build. Over the past few years, developers increasingly have been sitting on large numbers of planning permissions. This does not mean that they are ‘hoarding’ land per se. There are various factors that reduce the rate of housebuilding. Some of these might be overcome: it is quite conceivable that skills shortages for example, significant though they are right now, can be addressed if there is the will to do so.
What is less easy to overcome, however, is the need for the private-sector housebuilder to release homes into the market only at a rate which will not cause house prices to fall. This is fundamentally at odds with any strategy to reduce housing costs. Though not the only factor to have driven house price inflation since the 1970s, it is the one which will prove most difficult to surmount.
None of this is to say that planning rules do not need streamlining or liberalising. Clearly there are not enough planning permissions in place already to meet all of the country’s housing needs in perpetuity and we need a plentiful supply of developable land. There can be little doubt that the planning system, essential though it is, has increased residential land prices by raising scarcity. But land prices are influenced too by the availability of credit. And, even as more land is brought forward for development, the private sector will not build it out at such a rate that prices would fall.
This is illustrated well by recent disclosures about the painfully slow rate of progress on ex-public sector brownfield land released for housing by the Coalition government between 2011 and 2015. An analysis of 100 of those sites, with capacity for 9,100 new homes, found that by January 2016 still only 200 homes had been completed. Work had started on just 2,400 – about a quarter – despite another 2,100 having full planning permission.[xlv] This sample suggests that of the more than 100,000 homes that could have been built on land like this that was released by the last government, only a few thousand have so far been built.
Overcoming the understandable tendency to build out developable land so conservatively represents a major challenge to any effort to raise building levels to the necessary rates and reduce housing costs.
This is Chapter 3 of my Civitas report 'The Housing Question: Overcoming the shortage of homes'. You can read the report in its entirety (complete with references) as a PDF here. But I will also be publishing it chapter by chapter here in the slightly more digital-friendly format of Shorthand Social. If you've any thoughts or just want to get in touch on the subject, you can email me at daniel dot bentley at civitas dot org dot uk
Introduction: The Housing Question: Overcoming the shortage of homes
Chapter 1: A Practical Plan: Housebuilding in historical perspective
Chapter 2: From Slums to Slums? The property boom and its consequences
Chapter 3: Why Don't We Build More Homes? Barriers to housebuilding today
Conclusion: A National Housebuilding Strategy: What should be done?
[i] ‘Too many sites are stuck in the planning system, with an estimated 150,000 plots awaiting full sign off by local authorities,’ says John Stewart of the Home Builders Federation: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/07/number-of-unbuilt-homes-with-planning-permission-hits-record-levels-lga-says; see also: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/07/number-of-unbuilt-homes-with-planning-permission-hits-record-levels-lga-says
[ii] Niemietz, p.20.
[iii] ‘Free up 3.7 percent of London’s Green Belt to build one million new homes, says new report’, Adam Smith Institute, January 14th 2015: http://www.adamsmith.org/news/press-release-free-up-3-7-percent-of-londons-green-belt-to-build-one-million-new-homes-says-new-report/
[iv] Molior (2014), p.15.
[v] Table 253, DCLG: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building
[vi] ‘Housing in London 2015’, Mayor of London, p.38: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/housing_in_london_2015.pdf
[vii] ‘Removing barriers to housing delivery’, Outer London Commission, June 2015, p.2: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_files_destination/OLC%20background%20paper%20-%20issue%203%20barriers%20to%20delivery%20-%20June%202015.pdf
[viii] ‘Quarter of a million homes granted planning permission’, DCLG, June 30th 2015: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/quarter-of-a-million-homes-granted-planning-permission
[ix] Table 208, DCLG; see also ‘House Building December Quarter 2015, England’, DCLG.
[x] ‘Planning permissions granted in principle for close to 200,000 new homes a year’, Home Builders Federation, March 13th 2015: http://www.hbf.co.uk/media-centre/news/view/planning-permissions-granted-in-principle-for-close-to-200000-new-homes-a-year/
[xi] Graham Ruddick, ‘Revealed: housebuilders sitting on 600,000 plots of land’, The Guardian, December 30th 2015: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/30/revealed-housebuilders-sitting-on-450000-plots-of-undeveloped-land
[xii] Julia Kollewe, ‘Barratt buoyed by housing schemes for first-time buyers’, The Guardian, January 13th 2016: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/13/barratt-developments-housing-schemes-first-time-buyers-help-to-buy-starter-homes
[xiii] Brandon Lewis, speaking at the launch of Homes for the North, Portcullis House, January 28th 2016.
[xiv] Hilary Osborne, ‘UK housebuilding held up by lack of bricklayers, says report’, The Guardian, January 14th 2016: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/14/uk-housebuilding-held-up-lack-bricklayers-report-rics
[xv] Frank Field and Andrew Forsey, Fixing Broken Britain? An audit of working-age welfare reform since 2010, Civitas, January 2016: http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/fixingbrokenbritain.pdf
[xvi] Richard Garner, ‘Skills not schools: Lord Barker unveils UTC’s new deal for teenage learning’, The Independent, October 14th, 2013: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/skills-not-schools-lord-baker-unveils-utcs-new-deal-for-teenage-learning-8880050.html
[xvii] Julia Kollewe, ‘Housebuilders reject claims of hoarding land as property prices soar’, The Guardian, January 27th 2016: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/27/taylor-wimpey-housebuilders-reject-claims-hoarding-land-high-property-prices
[xviii] Molior, ‘Barriers to Housing Delivery’, GLA, 2012, p.9: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Barriers%20to%20Housing%20Delivery.pdf
[xix] Molior (2012), p.23.
[xx] ‘Homebuilding in the UK: A market study’, OFT, September 2008, pp.118-119: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140402142426/http:/www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/comp_policy/oft1020.pdf
[xxi] Molior (2012), p.23.
[xxii] ‘Delivering against target: Disposal of public land for new homes’, NAO, June 2015, p.22: https://www.nao.org.uk/report/disposal-of-public-land-for-new-homes/
[xxiii] ‘Delivering against target: Disposal of public land for new homes’, p.24.
[xxiv] Molior (2014), p.16.
[xxv] David Adams and Chris Leishman, ‘Factors Affecting Housing Build-out Rates’, University of Glasgow, 2008, p.6: http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_302200_en.pdf
[xxvi] Molior (2014), p.3.
[xxvii] Tom de Castella, ‘Why can’t the UK build 240,000 houses a year?’, BBC Magazine: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30776306
[xxviii] Evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, January 26th 2016: http://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cdb91f67-244a-457c-b43b-174ca371f354
[xxix] Neal Hudson of Savills explains the dynamics of land supply in greater detail here: http://www.savills.co.uk/research_articles/186866/188996-0
[xxx] ‘Homebuilding in the UK: A market study’, OFT.
[xxxi] ‘Homebuilding in the UK: A market study’, OFT, p.55.
[xxxii] Adams and Leishman, p.14.
[xxxiii] Adams and Leishman, p.2.
[xxxiv] Adams and Leishman, p.12.
[xxxv] Adams and Leishman, p.17.
[xxxvi] Merrett (1982), p.182.
[xxxvii] Merrett (1982), p.300.
[xxxviii] Peter Kemp, Private Renting in Transition, Chartered Institute of Housing, 2004, p.18.
[xxxix] Samy, p.16.
[xl] Samy, pp.14-15.
[xli] Brian Green, ‘Is it time for housing policy to pay more heed to the costs and the benefits of location?’, Building Blogs, July 17th 2013: http://brickonomics.building.co.uk/2013/07/is-it-time-for-housing-policy-to-pay-more-heed-to-the-costs-and-the-benefits-of-location/
[xlii] Thomas Aubrey, ‘The challenge of accelerating UK housebuilding’, Policy Network, p.4: http://www.policy-network.net/publications/4810/The-challenge-of-accelerating-UK-housebuilding
[xliii] Molior (2012), p.35.
[xliv] Aubrey, p.6.
[xlv] Written evidence from the Department for Communities and Local Government: http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/public-accounts-committee/disposal-of-public-land-for-new-homes-progress-review/written/27583.html
