Planning for Housing in the Post-Barker Era: Affordability, Household Formation, and Tenure Choice

Abstract

The Barker Review of Housing Supply recommended the greater use of market indicators as the basis for providing sufficient land for future housing requirements. Worsening affordability would be a sign that more land is required. However, the traditional approach to land release used by planners is based on trend household projections. The paper shows that this will typically lead to worsening affordability over time. The paper, therefore, develops an alternative economic model more suitable to the post-Barker era, covering both household formation and tenure choice. The model is used to analyse a range of policy issues, including raising home-ownership rates and home-ownership sustainability.

Keywords: housing affordability, economic models, household formation, housing tenure

JEL Classification: R21