The urgency of this can’t be underplayed and it bears repeating. Four out of five renters who want to own their own home don’t have sufficient savings for a deposit in their area and three quarters don’t feel they could afford the cost. New data shows the average home now costs 8.7 times the average local wage – the highest ratio since records began.
Whilst the speed of building new properties continues to fall, the UK is not utilising its existing housing stock. Over half of all owned homes are now under-occupied, whilst the number of homes across the UK which are standing empty – currently over 653,000 – shows no real signs of reducing quickly.
So, what can be done to address the housing supply issues we face? We need a dual-pronged approach to tackling the housing supply problem we face.
Build more new homes
According to research by the National Housing Federation and Shelter, there is currently a backlog of housing need of 4.5 million homes in the UK. They calculate the country needs 340,000 homes a year over a period of 15 years, of which 145,000 need to be affordable. However, to put this into perspective, the UK has not delivered 300,000 homes since 1977.
The reasons we continually fail as a country to build enough homes are broad and complex. Providing more homes cannot be done at the expense of quality or the environment. The country needs a thoughtful, long-term strategy that pulls on the right levers so that we can deliver the homes we need.
Bring more existing homes back into use
Repurposing and retrofitting our existing housing stock – the oldest in Europe – should be a key priority.
There is also a growing sense that empty properties could provide some of the solutions to the housing shortage, providing affordable homes for first-time buyers and others. After all, it’s far kinder to the environment to refurbish and repurpose old property, than to build new homes on green belt land.
National campaigning charity, Action on Empty Homes are calling for a new national strategy along with the creation of a national fund to support councils in bringing tens of thousands of long-term empty homes back into use through a locally focused programme of grants and loans. It has been very successful before and it could work again.
Addressing the supply of homes is not just about new build, but it is also about looking at how we can make more use of our existing housing stock. As things currently stand, the housing market does not function effectively and sadly, for a generation of young families, unless something can be done with regards to increasing housing supply, they are now less likely than ever to own their own home.
