Something is badly wrong with the housing market – so why aren’t we talking about it?

In 1991, 67 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds owned their own home. In 2016, that figure had fallen to 38 per cent.

The average house price in the UK is eight times the average wage, this ratio having doubled since 1998.

Half of first-time buyers in Britain are now dependent on the Bank of Mum and Dad, rising to two-thirds in London and the south-east.

Over the past 20 years, the proportion of people living in the private rented sector has doubled. There are one million more 18- to 34-year-olds living with their parents than there were in 2002.

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Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s (expressed in 2016 prices) the average price of residential land rose from £150,000 per hectare to £1.3 million. By 2007 it was £5 million. (In the 1930s, before planning permission, land cost represented only 2 per cent of the cost of an average home.)

In England, land without planning permission is worth £20,000 per hectare. That same land with permission is worth £2 million per hectare.

Since 1970, France has built 16.7 million new homes, Britain just 8.9 million.

If we allowed building on all non-beautiful land within 800 metres of a Tube station or a train station, we would have room for one million more homes.

No significant new settlements have been established in the UK since Milton Keynes in 1970.

All these figures come from Liam Halligan’s fascinating book Home Truths: The UK’s Chronic Housing Shortage — How it Happened, Why it Matters and How to Solve it.

In truth I don’t think they capture the scale of the problem. For instance, by catering to buy-to-let or overseas investors rather than the ultimate occupant, housing developers have overproduced two-bedroom apartments. These are wonderful if you want to rent to a two-person flatshare, but often useless for owner occupation, since they are too large for one person and too small (and gardenless) for raising a family.