Daily Junction.mobi portalOpinion · June 26, 2026 · Naomi Clarke · 9 min
House prices are 8 times earnings, rents are soaring, and young people are locked out. The solutions are obvious — we just lack the political will.
The UK housing market is broken. House prices are 8.3 times average earnings, making homeownership unaffordable for most young people without family help. Private rents have risen 30% in real terms since 2010, trapping millions in expensive, insecure tenancies. And 1.3 million households are on social housing waiting lists, with only 10,000 social homes built last year. This is not a natural disaster or an act of God. It is a policy failure, the result of decades of underbuilding, planning restrictions, and political cowardice. The solutions are obvious: build more homes, reform planning, invest in social housing, and tax land. But politicians refuse to act, because homeowners vote and they do not want house prices to fall. It is time to admit that the housing market is not working, and to demand the radical reforms needed to fix it.
The UK builds around 200,000 homes per year, far below the estimated 300,000–340,000 needed to meet demand (according to government estimates and independent think tanks). This shortfall has persisted for decades, and the result is a chronic housing shortage.
Supply has not kept up with demand because:
The result is that demand far exceeds supply, driving up prices and rents.
The UK's planning system is one of the most restrictive in the developed world. Green belt land (protected countryside around cities) covers 13% of England and cannot be built on without special permission. But much of the green belt is not actually green — it is scrubland, golf courses, car parks, and low-grade agricultural land. Only 2% of green belt land is genuine countryside worth protecting.
Nimbyism (Not In My Back Yard) means local residents often oppose new housing, and local councils are reluctant to approve developments that are unpopular with voters. The result is that land with planning permission is scarce and expensive, pushing up house prices.
Developers often buy land with planning permission but do not build on it immediately, a practice known as land banking. They do this to control supply and maximise profits, releasing homes slowly to avoid flooding the market and driving prices down.
A 2017 government review found that developers were sitting on planning permission for 423,000 homes that had not been built. Developers argue that they cannot build faster because of labour shortages, material costs, and mortgage availability, but the evidence suggests they are deliberately restricting supply to keep prices high.
Social housebuilding collapsed after the Right to Buy scheme was introduced in 1980, allowing council tenants to buy their homes at a discount. Over 2 million council homes were sold, but they were not replaced. Successive governments have relied on private developers to build affordable housing, but they prioritise profitable private housing.
As a result, the social housing stock has shrunk from 6.5 million homes in 1980 to 4 million in 2024, while the population has grown by 10 million.
Politicians refuse to tackle the housing crisis because homeowners vote, and they do not want house prices to fall. Around 65% of households own their homes (either outright or with a mortgage), and they are concentrated in marginal constituencies. Homeowners have benefited from decades of house price rises, and they see their homes as investments. Any policy that threatens to lower house prices is electoral suicide.
The result is that politicians make token gestures (Help to Buy, stamp duty cuts) that inflate demand without increasing supply, making the problem worse.
The solutions to the housing crisis are obvious. We just lack the political will to implement them.
The most obvious solution is to build more homes. The government has set a target of 300,000 homes per year, but this has never been met. To reach the target, the government would need to:
The green belt is sacrosanct in British politics, but it is also a major barrier to housebuilding. Much of the green belt is low-value land (car parks, scrubland, golf courses) that could be built on without harming the countryside.
The government should:
This would unlock hundreds of thousands of homes without destroying the countryside.
The UK needs to build 90,000 social homes per year to clear waiting lists and meet demand, according to the National Housing Federation. This would require significant public investment — around £10–12 billion per year — but it would provide affordable homes for low-income families and reduce pressure on the private rental market.
Social housing should be funded by:
The UK should replace council tax (a regressive property tax based on 1991 values) with a land value tax (LVT) — a tax on the value of land, not buildings.
LVT would:
LVT is supported by economists across the political spectrum, but it is politically toxic because landowners and homeowners oppose it.
When planning permission is granted, the value of land can increase by 10–100 times. For example, agricultural land worth £10,000 per hectare can become residential land worth £1 million per hectare once planning permission is granted.
Currently, this uplift is captured by landowners and developers, not the public. The government should introduce a land value capture tax, taxing 50–80% of the uplift and using the revenue to fund infrastructure and affordable housing.
This would:
The private rental market is broken. Rents are too high, tenancies are insecure, and tenants have few rights. The government should:
Second homes and buy-to-let properties reduce the supply of homes available for owner-occupation. The government should:
The biggest barrier to fixing the housing crisis is politics. Homeowners do not want house prices to fall, and they are a powerful voting bloc. Politicians fear the electoral backlash from homeowners more than they care about young people who cannot afford to buy.
The result is that politicians make token gestures (Help to Buy, stamp duty cuts, planning reforms that are never implemented) while avoiding the radical reforms needed to fix the problem.
The housing crisis is a generational issue. Older generations bought homes when they were affordable (3–4 times earnings) and have benefited from decades of price rises. Younger generations face prices of 8–10 times earnings and cannot afford to buy without family help.
This is not just unfair — it is economically damaging. High house prices reduce labour mobility (people cannot afford to move for work), increase inequality (wealth is concentrated among homeowners), and reduce consumer spending (people spend more on housing and less on everything else).
Politicians know that fixing the housing crisis requires lowering house prices (or at least stopping them from rising). But homeowners vote, and they do not want their homes to lose value. So politicians do nothing, and the crisis worsens.
The only way to break this deadlock is for younger people to vote in larger numbers and demand change. But turnout among under-30s is low (around 50%, compared to 75% for over-65s), so politicians have little incentive to prioritise their concerns.
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