Planning for housing in the post-Barker era: affordability, household formation, and tenure choice

The Barker Review of Housing Supply recommended the greateruse of market indicators as the basis for providing sufficientland for future housing requirements. Worsening affordabilitywould be a sign that more land is required. However, the traditionalapproach to land release used by planners is based on trendhousehold projections. The paper shows that this will typicallylead to worsening affordability over time. The paper, therefore,develops an alternative economic model more suitable to thepost-Barker era, covering both household formation and tenurechoice. The model is used to analyse a range of policy issues,including raising home-ownership rates and home-ownership sustainability.