Government Sponsored Home-Owner-Ist Propaganda of The Week

Right at the end of an article headed House prices heading for a fall, surveyors warn:

The availability of land is a key factor in changes to house prices, separate work by researchers at the London School of Economics has found...(1) The report suggested that relaxing borrowing restraints added to ownership levels (2), but had little impact on house prices. (3)

The work was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which is primarily funded by the Department for Business.

1) The impact of planning restrictions is not as much as you would expect; all the evidence shows that it's mainly credit availability (and low or non-taxation of land ownership and gains) that drives prices. For example, China, Spain and Ireland showed that you can have property price bubbles even when there's a lot of construction, because 'investors' buy up new builds and just leave them empty in the hope that their capital gains will more than cover the interest cost. BTW, there was no 'building boom' in the USA, per capita they built just as few new houses as we did in the UK.

2) That is an outright lie. The level of owner-occupation has fallen from 71% to 68% between 2003 and 2009. That's an inevitable result of rampant Home-Owner-Ism - despite what they say, it reduces the number of owner-occupiers.

3) See (1). That is an outright lie. Presumably they are trying to exonerate the banks as a warm up for a bit more QE.