Quick Thoughts on the Housing Crisis

This isn’t polished, but here’s what’s on my mind. Brain worms need to get out, so to speak.

The flawed “enough homes” argument

Recently I chatted with someone who doesn’t follow the news or experts, doesn’t pay attention to details like most people. I tried to point out a flaw in their take on housing, but they pushed back hard. Their arguments were rooted in past biases, not the numbers. It made me reflect on how weird my own brain gets when I dive into this stuff.

Their solution? Kick companies out of the housing market and make the stock more “efficient.” Build but you don’t need to build that much more. In plain English: we have enough homes, we just don’t use them right and housing shouldn’t be an investment.

I actually agree housing shouldn’t be treated purely as an investment. But you still need capital to build. Treating homes only as assets is what drives prices up when supply is constrained.

High rents, high prices = shortfall, not surplus

The UK has sky-high rents and property values. That’s a sign we don’t have enough housing. Even counting empty or second homes, the shortfall is still massive:

• About 712,000 second homes
• Estimates for empty homes range from 270k to 1 million but habitable I don’t know.

So the idea of “just using what we’ve got” doesn’t pass the smell test. To be fair not build nothing it more we have a ton don’t use it well.

Office conversions aren’t a quick fix

Sure, converting unused office blocks sounds tempting. But offices are built for desks and meetings, not for bedrooms and kitchens. You need new walls, full rewiring, insulation, plumbing all of it. Often it’s cheaper to knock down and rebuild than to retrofit. It’s like trying to turn a castle into a cosy flat: doable in theory, but a nightmare in practice.

Time to build and densify

We need more homes and we need them now.

In my local area, 24,000 families are on the social-housing waiting list. Nationally it’s 1.33 million. Councils simply don’t have the cash. The housing association can’t build fast enough and lack the cash.

What if local authorities borrowed against existing housing assets to fund new developments? What if mortgages were structured to channel money directly into builders, not speculators? Granny’s house shouldn’t just be her pension why not let it help build her grandchildren’s homes while still giving her a decent retirement flat?

We must shift from homes as investment vehicles back to homes as places to live. But funding is crucial. Cities and town centres need to grow denser, with mixed-use developments and green spaces woven in.

A massive shortfall in homes

Nobody realises how big the gap is. We’re short about 7 million homes, building only 200k per year. Even if our population shrank, we’d still fall short—unless there’s mass die-off (grim, but true).

Picture an elderly couple stuck in a four-bed house because they can’t afford to downsize. In social housing, the situation’s even worse. We’re building almost nothing compared to need.

Rethinking investment and planning

We need to rethink our approach entirely. Yes, borrowing against assets might drive down valuations but channeling that investment into building more homes is the priority. Local builders should be churning out new social and private homes. And when private industry stalls, the state must launch a massive, centrally funded housebuilding programme.

Part of our mess is the planning system itself. It makes almost any development agonisingly slow and expensive, so we end up with tiny, low-quality homes. We need money flowing into homebuilders—and the freedom for them to build good homes.

Finally, a lot of our existing stock is near end-of-life. That 7 million-home shortfall could be much, much higher once we account for replacements.