The UK housing shortage is a myth – here's the proof

We've been told that house prices have stayed high due to a dearth in housing. But as the 2011 census has shown, that simply isn't true, says John Stepek.

Why are British house prices still so high, even in the wake of the worst financial crisis for generations? Housing bulls would have you believe it's down to a shortage of property. After all, if there's a physical shortage of houses, and a growing population, then prices are bound to stay high unless a huge number of new houses are built fast. Given our planning laws and generally conservative attitude towards development, that seems unlikely. So it's a great sales pitch for property.

The trouble is, it's not true. One of the most interesting titbits from the 2011 census was highlighted this week by Andrew Lilico on the ConservativeHome blog. As Lilico notes, between 1981 and the 1991 census, the number of surplus dwellings' (properties) compared to households (one person or group of people living together) dwindled as fewer houses were built. Further estimates in the late 1990s suggested the situation had worsened.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.