Skip to main content

The Telegraph:
Why UK house prices have grown faster than anywhere else

5 August 2014

House prices have grown faster in England since late 1973 than almost all other European countries. So what is going on? The problem is clearly that there is too little supply, given the demand and the growing population. But why? There are two possible kinds of constraints. The first are regulatory: ... The second kind are natural and physical: a scarcity of land, for example, or an uneven topography that makes it very hard to build. So which of the two factors are most important in the case of the UK? And what would happen to prices in their absence? Christian A. L. Hilber of the London School of Economics and Wouter Vermeulen of the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis have just produced a dispassionate analysis of the problem, which will be published shortly in the Economic Journal.

This article was published by The Telegraph on August 5, 2014
Link to article here

Related publications
'The Impact of Supply Constraints on House Prices in England', Christian A.L. Hilber and Wouter Vermeulen, SERC Discussion Paper No.119, September 2012 (revised 2014).

Related links
Christian Hilber webpage
SERC website

Read more... The Telegraph