Letters: We can’t build our way out of the housing crisis

Excess demand

Sir: Liam Halligan (‘The house mafia’, 26 June) treats us to an exposé of the shoddy products of the mass housebuilders. In the course of his article, however, he accepts as given that the solution to the housing crisis is to build more houses.

The problem, however, is not one of deficient supply; it is a problem of excess demand, driven by ultra-low interest rates, kept so low for so long that the result has been an out-of-control housing boom.

The young are being prevented from buying a house, not because housebuilders hoard land and refuse to build, but because buyers with access to eye-watering amounts of borrowed money have forced prices so high that they are now out of reach of most. You could cover the entire south-east of England in houses and it would have little impact on house prices, because the demand is, in effect, infinite. However many houses you build, there will be any number of potential buyers outbidding each other to buy them.