Solving Britain’s Housing Crisis: Where and how to build 1.5 million homes

Nikhil Datta, Amrita Kulka

Over the past three decades the UK has seen housing affordability plummet. In 1997, the average house price was approximately three times the average annual salary. Today is it more than eight times the average salary in England, and six times in Wales with borrowing costs at a 16 year high over the past two years. The shortage of housing supply, and critically, the misallocation of where homes are built, are central to this issue. In response, the UK government has pledged to build 1.5 million homes over five years. Using data on over 20 billion housing searches from Rightmove - the UK’s most popular housing platform - together with the full history of rental and sales listings from 2019–2024, this report provides insight into where and how these homes should be built to meet actual demand. Accompanying this report, we introduce a new mapping tool to help guide policy makers and stakeholders to build houses where they are demanded: wheretobuild.warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window

Responsive Public Policy