Given the Tories are the party of Macmillan, it seems quite right that they’ve picked housing as one of their six key election priorities. David Cameron gave a speech on it today, promising 200,000 ‘starter homes’ – properties sold to first-time buyers at a discount – by 2020.
There have been some complaints today, notably from Shelter, that this policy will not increase the supply of housing overall because developers can swap plans they already had for affordable homes for the starter homes instead. Given housing supply is currently so low (see the two graphs below for the UK and secondly for England in the quarters covered by this Coalition), surely ministers should be more interested in overall supply, rather than tenure?
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Incidentally, other campaigners are objecting on the grounds that even if this does increase overall supply, it will not increase the number of affordable homes being built and that therefore many of those who are priced out will remain priced out.
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