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In December 2017 Daniel Bentley at Civitas published a short book, The Land Question, which is available for free as a pdf on the Civitas website (link). A lot of my posting over the last three years has been a protracted (and presumably largely ineffectual) attempt to wind up the PovertyLaters. One of the things that irks the PovertyLaters is that they imagine themselves being blamed for high house prices. The question of who is to blame for high house prices can be separated from the question of who benefits from high house prices. One of the groups of people who benefit hugely from high house prices but don't get a lot of attention are those who own land. Posters here have long noted that one group of landowners (who don't always see themselves in those terms) are mortgaged owner-occupiers or people who own their own home outright and as such are thus the beneficiaries of policies and structures which drive up and sustain high house prices; buy-to-let investors are almost invariably a subset of this group who've borrowed some more money and gone a little harder into the market for land. Another group who are much more important in terms of the addition to the supply of houses are 'people' (including legal persons such as companies and trusts) who own land, with or without planning permission, onto which new houses could in theory be built. The heart of Bentley's argument is that the developer might get a lot of stick for the rate at which they build out but the main beneficiaries when new homes are built are the landowners who sold the developers the land. Landowners sell to the highest bidder, the highest bidder's bid is premised on the assumption that they will build out only at a rate which allows house prices in the area to remain at the price levels which informed the original bid. Bentley argues that we need a "rewiring of the incentives for landowners" to "prevent hoarding and douse speculation". A briefer roundup of Bentley's views on the problem with the UK's "market-led housing supply" (and its links to the ridiculous Help to Buy schemes) is also presented in this article; Market-led housing supply and the lure of demand stimulants in the UK. For as long as the price of land is anchored to current prices the rate at which houses are supplied will support current prices; if society genuinely wants cheaper housing then the we need to make significant changes to how land is converted to residential use.

Fifteen minutes of thought provoking stuff from an architect http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047bzlx "Nothing to fear from freedom"