Skip to main content
CEP researchers Christian Hilber and Paul Cheshire compare the decline in the UK's home ownership rate, from 70 per cent in 2004 to 64 per cent in recent years, to other countries around the world - UK house prices have ... Read more...
25 June 2023
Without inherited wealth or a leg-up from the Bank of Mum and Dad, prospective first-time buyers are forced to abandon dreams of home ownership. Paul Cheshire describes the state of affairs for first-time buyers in Londo... Read more...
27 January 2023
Paul Cheshire speaks on some of the wider problems of the UK housing market. ... Read more...
01 October 2021
An new annual property tax on the value of each home, proposed by economists Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber, would be fairer than current system, according to a new report by think tank Bright Bl... Read more...
20 May 2021
House prices could fall when the stamp duty holiday comes to a close. London is particularly vulnerable because the price of houses rose particularly sharply over 2020, while the population of the capital... Read more...
30 March 2021
LSE study says there has been little exodus to rural areas in past year but buyers have sought space, with detached houses close to the centre of London seeing the biggest price increases over the past year. ... Read more...
Big cities thrive because of the economic and social benefits of proximity – but proximity also helps to spread Covid-19. Does this mean an end to the big city revival of recent years? Much will depend o... Read more...
23 September 2020
Discussing the potential effects of COVID-19 on housing, Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber write that real house prices and rents may initially fall. Yet housing will remain unaffordable f... Read more...
06 May 2020
To speculate usefully about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Britain’s housing markets one needs a clear analytical understanding of how our housing markets work and what forces cause them to chan... Read more...
17 April 2020
Special report: includes research findings from CEP researchers Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber [paywall] INREV THE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF HELP TO BUY* Felipe Carozzi London School of Economics & Centre for Economic Pe... Read more...
22 January 2020
The study by the London School of Economics argued that the ban had damaged the local construction and tourism industries. It was claimed that it had caused the pool of available homes to shrink as housebuilders walked a... Read more...
01 November 2019
But their ban has backfired, according to a report by the London School of Economics. The developers have simply walked away, causing the number of new homes being built to shrink and for prices to soar. And ... Read more...
Read more...
31 October 2019
However, Professor Christian Hilber believes the ban could increase the "ghost town effect" as it inadvertently reduced the number of available homes due to building companies finding new work in surrounding areas. The ... Read more...
Home Affairs editor A THOUSAND "commuter villages" with 2.1million new homes should be built on the green belt near railway stations to help solve the housing crisis, a leading government adviser and academic has propose... Read more...
22 September 2019
19 August 2019
Both Christian Hilber, professor of economic geography at LSE, and Rory Meakin, research fellow at the TaxPayers' Alliance, thought stamp duty hindered some from downsizing and meant larger family homes were generally un... Read more...
23 July 2019
A study at the London School of Economics has found that such bans damage local construction and tourism industries. At the same time, outsiders, who are banned from new-build homes, flood the market for older places, pu... Read more...
20 July 2019
Properties on the Lockington Crescent estate were on the market for between £4,500 and £7,000 - considerably cheaper than in London, where homes were up to 30% more expensive, according to economic historian ... Read more...
07 July 2019
The author of a new paper examining satisfaction with home ownership said the pleasure many buyers take in their increasingly big houses is often undermined by envy. "If I bought a house to feel like 'I'm the king of th... Read more...
13 June 2019
Although the median size for a newly-built single-family house has increased from 1,500 square feet in 1973 to more than 2,400 square feet in 2017 according to Census Bureau data, Americans aren't happier with their big ... Read more...
12 June 2019
But according to a recent paper, Americans aren't getting any happier with their ever bigger homes. "Despite a major upscaling of single-family houses since 1980," writes Clement Bellet, a postdoctoral fellow at the Euro... Read more...
11 June 2019
Snippet ... 80% of new housing is going on so called brownfield land in the south-east but relatively little brownfield land in the right places at the you can develop a reasonable prices that have to build on some green... Read more...
20 May 2019
... in property. Professor Christian Hilber, professor of economic geography ...... Read more...
27 April 2019
In a new CEP Discussion Paper, "Affordability, Financial Innovation and the Start of the Housing Boom" my coauthors and I study the relationship between the start of the housing boom and the use of non-traditional mortga... Read more...
26 April 2019
House prices indicate the value of canals as an environmental resource to local residents in England and Wales, write Stephen Gibbons, Cong Peng and Cheng Keat Tang. ... Read more...
09 April 2019
Our recent research investigates the value of this resource to local residents in England and Wales, using house prices. Analysis of house prices is a well-established method within urban and environmental economics for ... Read more...
02 April 2019
But according to a forthcoming paper from Felipe Carozzi, Christian Hilber and Xiaolun Yu of the London School of Economics, the clearest impact of Help to Buy has been to raise house prices, potentially by as much as 5 ... Read more...
09 March 2019
But Christian Hilber, a professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, says even if those empty apartments were occupied, they wouldn't help mitigate the affordable housing crisis.... Read more...
05 March 2019
Snippet: ... Build, build, build! Free exchange (November 24th) argued that there is more to high house prices in Britain than constrained supply. Well, yes, and no. The underlying cause of housing unaffordability is con... Read more...
15 December 2018
The £15bn Crossrail will serve the Buckinghamshire village of Taplow, in the green belt, next year, yet no homes can be added there, noted Professor Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics ... Read more...
10 June 2018
Evidence was submitted to show that nearly all rich foreign investors and their families who came to the UK under the Tier 1 scheme lived in expensive houses, sent their children to public schools and used pri... Read more...
25 May 2018
By Steve Gibbons The ‘Bedroom Tax’ – or ‘under occupancy penalty’ or ‘removal of the spare room subsidy’ as it has been called officially – is a highly contro... Read more...
16 May 2018
Interview with Stephen Gibbons. “Did the bedroom tax or 'under-occupancy charge' actually work?” ... Read more...
14 May 2018
This is hardly a fringe view. Economists Christian Hilber and Wouter Vermeulen point out that house prices would be 35 per cent lower if the most restrictive parts of the country (the South-East) were merely a... Read more...
08 May 2018
According to research in 2014 by the London School of Economics, wind farms can cut as much as 12 percent off the value of homes within a 2 kilometer radius, reducing property values as far as 14 kilometers aw... Read more...
17 April 2018
The green belt is associated in most people’s minds with England’s “green and pleasant land” immortalised by William Blake in his poem Jerusalem. But according to Paul Cheshire, profess... Read more...
01 February 2018
... Read more...
02 January 2018
Article by Christian Hilber and Teemu Lyytikainen How replacing stamp duty with better-designed local taxes could alleviate the crisis of housing availability. The SDLT (commonly labelled ‘stamp... Read more...
28 November 2017
...Chancellor Philip Hammond is looking to reform the planning system by allowing building on the green belt to help more people possibly young people get on the housing ladder this attempt result the housing ... Read more...
06 November 2017
Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristoffer Moeller, Sevrin Waights and Nicolai Wendland DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12454 Related publications Game of Zones: The Economics of Conservation Areas Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristo... Read more...
24 October 2017
…a shortfall of more than 109,000 new homes across England alone. Of that figure, 86 per cent were needed in parts ofthe country with the highest housing demand. Paul Cheshire, a professor of economic g... Read more...
07 October 2017
The U.K. government’s decision to expand its Help to Buy program is drawing criticism because it may stimulate London’s property market again. Unless supply improves, the effect of the program... Read more...
04 October 2017
The cure for the U.K. housing market is more supply, not more demand. It's true that Help to Buy's introduction in 2013 and a market rebound gave developers the incentive to build more, with new starts... Read more...
02 October 2017
Some economists have warned that the UK is heading for a house price collapse London School of Economics professor Paul Cheshire has said we are due "a significant correction". ... Read more...
17 September 2017
Snippet: ... for the first time compared to previous decades they would not receive anything so they are receiving somethings in relative terms to the top they're closing the relative gap but in absolute t... Read more...
10 September 2017
Snippet: down and down and then the NHS within a matter of the housing crisis for napping and all that get blamed on immigrants. Mention of a study done at the London School of Economics looking at the relatio... Read more...
09 September 2017
Over the last full economic cycle, from 1993 to 2008, the cost of a hectare of residential land in London rose by over 300% in real terms, to more than £8m ($15m) and enough green-belt land is available ... Read more...
27 August 2017
Woking has the highest density of golf courses of anywhere in the UK at more than 10% According to The Guardian , Surrey has more land for golf courses than homes thanks to planning policies that ensure the... Read more...
28 July 2017
Dr Ted Pinchbeck, a Fellow in Real Estate Economics and Finance at LSE and one of the authors of the research, said: “Prices of leaseholds of different lengths provide direct new evidence on how peop... Read more...
21 July 2017
Homeowners living in leasehold properties are being asked to pay extortionate prices to extend the leases on their homes. That’s the conclusion of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LS... Read more...
Discussion on possible housing crash – mention of Paul Cheshire. Click to open ... Read more...
18 July 2017
Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, says that a house price correction, or significant fall in prices, is likely within the next two or three years. This is partly... Read more...
14 July 2017
Letter from Edwin Loo, Singapore Singapore is one of only a few jurisdictions in the world to have successfully implemented a comprehensive system of land value capture through betterment taxes and revenues... Read more...
12 July 2017
Newspaper headlines this week have been shouting about a crash in the housing market. Massive collapse! Property prices could plunge! We hear from the man quoted in many of those stories, Professor Paul Cheshi... Read more...
08 July 2017
Construction of McMansions has also increased but people who have smaller homes near where McMansions are built are much, much unhappier with their homes, according to a paper published in the spring by r... Read more...
05 July 2017
Construction of McMansions has also increased but people who have smaller homes near where McMansions are built are much, much unhappier with their homes, according to a paper published in the spring by resear... Read more...
04 July 2017
Prof Christian Hilber from the LSE said: ‘If Brexit leads to a recession and/or sluggish growth for extended periods, then an extended and severe downturn is more likely than a short-lived and mild one.&... Read more...
02 July 2017
Paul Cheshire, economist and emeritus professor of economic geography at the LSE, has been awarded a CBE for services to economics and housing. ... Read more...
04 January 2017
Five housing executives and a professor of economics and housing policy have been awarded medals in the New Year honours list. … Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at the London School of... Read more...
30 December 2016
Professor John Van Reenen, who predicted ahead of the referendum that Brexit would cost up to £1,700 per household per year, has been given an OBE for services to economics and public policy making. Othe... Read more...
Shale gas offers the prospect of a low-cost energy future, but invokes fears of environmental catastrophe, write Stephen Gibbons, Stephan Heblich, Esther Lho and Christopher Timmins ... Read more...
16 December 2016
Paul Cheshire, Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics is a longstanding critic of Britain’s byzantine planning system. [No link] ... Read more...
02 December 2016
Trump’s true legacy will be that of rural vandalism on a colossal scale. A unique wilderness at Menie destroyed for a golf course. This was a site of Special Scientific Interest, the highest environmenta... Read more...
01 November 2016
[Jeremy] Corbyn too is proposing a solution ''which would reduce numbers'', despite the fact in its 2015 General Election briefing, the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics observed: ''There ... Read more...
06 October 2016
I am one of those people who, as she anticipated, have a bit of a problem with something Mrs May said about immigration: If you're one of those people who lost their job, who stayed in work but on reduced ... Read more...
05 October 2016
Decades of planning policies that constrain the supply of houses and land and turn them into something like gold or artworks is to blame for the current housing crisis in the UK rather than foreign buyers, according to a... Read more...
17 August 2016
Paul Cheshire argues that golf courses capitalise on green belt planning laws which keep down land prices and contribute to a housing shortage. The interview was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on August 10, 2016 Link to th... Read more...
10 August 2016
Education is not just a vital cornerstone of our culture and economy, it is also potentially one of the great social levellers. However rich or poor our parents, however supportive or dysfunctional our families, a high-q... Read more...
02 August 2016
There is another house price bubble under way in the Dublin area. Notwithstanding the efforts by the Central Bank to keep mortgage credit under control, some extraordinary prices have been quoted recently for the small p... Read more...
07 July 2016
Article by Christian Hilber In the first of a two-part article discussing the British planning system, Christian Hilber, Associate Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics, argues that the UK pl... Read more...
06 July 2016
''You're going to see in increase in consumer prices from Brexit and most of that is going to hit the middle income,'' Swati Dhingra, assistant professor at LSE's Department of Economics and Centre for Economic Performan... Read more...
24 June 2016
Study after study confirms that EU migrants have an overwhelmingly positive effect on the British economy. They have a higher employment rate (78.2%) than people born in the UK (72.5%), those from Poland and other A8 acc... Read more...
10 June 2016
There is enough green-belt land in Greater London to build 1.6m houses at average densities, says Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics (LSE) - about 30 times the number of new houses London needs a year. But o... Read more...
30 April 2016
Poor land-use regulation is the main reason for Londons crazy prices. Two problems stand out. ... There is enough green-belt land in Greater London to build 1.6m houses at average densities, says Paul Cheshire of the Lo... Read more...
25 April 2016
New research by London school of economics Professor Christian Hilber and Wouter Vermeulen of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis provides strength and evidence of the connection between high housing pr... Read more...
12 April 2016
It costs a relatively large amount of money to buy a house in the UK - something readers from the UK will almost certainly agree with. But economists differ over why this is. This column argues that strict planning regul... Read more...
10 April 2016
Article by Guy Michaels Over the last 30 years, floods have killed more than 500,000 people globally, and displaced about 650 million more. In a recent paper published by the Centre for Economic Performance, we examined... Read more...
09 March 2016
Source: London School of Economics and Political Science Country: World Abstract Does economic activity relocate away from areas that are at high risk of recurring shocks? We examine this question in the context of floo... Read more...
03 March 2016
Article by Guy Michaels Over the last 30 years, floods have killed more than 500,000 people globally, and displaced about 650m more. In a recent paper published by the Centre for Economic Performance, we examined why so... Read more...
01 March 2016
Paul Cheshire is interviewed about building on the green belt in the South East. The interview was broadcast by BBC South East on the Inside Out programme on February 29, 2016 Link to recorded interview here Related... Read more...
29 February 2016
The CBI estimates that leaving the EU would, ''conservatively'' have a significant net negative impact on the UK economy of £78bn annually, or about 4-5 percent of GDP. However, others have made more dire predictio... Read more...
21 January 2016
Article by Adriana Kocornik-Mina, Thomas McDermott, Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch During the past couple of months alone, floods have displaced 100,000 people or more in Kenya, in Paraguay and Uruguay, and in India, ... Read more...
Article by Guy Michaels In a new study published by the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), we examine why so many people are hit by floods year after year. In particular, we ask whether urban populations respond to ... Read more...
11 January 2016
Dr Tom McDermott of the School of Economics and the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork has been working with colleagues from the London School of Economics and Oxford University to examine overpo... Read more...
Professor Paul Cheshire accused the tycoon of hugely exaggerating the size and benefits of his stake in Scotland and said promises made by him were falling apart at the seams. This article was published by the Mail on ... Read more...
10 January 2016
Climate change experts have backed calls for tighter planning restrictions to prevent new building on flood plains after the worst national flooding crisis in a generation. After a major study of city floods around the w... Read more...
07 January 2016
Government initiatives to support home ownership and build new houses will fail to have any real impact in 2016, with UK property prices expected to keep climbing. John Van Reenen, Director, Centre for Economic Performa... Read more...
03 January 2016
The UK taxpayer is left to pick up the cost of flooding because housebuilders do not contribute enough when building homes, giving them an incentive to build on floodplains, according to research. Flooding costs between... Read more...
01 January 2016
In her address to the Conservative party conference, the home secretary delivered a pointed speech saying that ''there is no case, in the national interest, for immigration of the scale we have experienced over the last ... Read more...
06 October 2015
Professor Alan Manning of the London School of Economics has studied unemployment in former industrial areas and says every city needs the equivalent of an export sector - something to bring money from outside the area,... Read more...
04 October 2015
In the East London case, wrote Paul Cheshire, an emeritus professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, via email, ''the very early relatively poor but mainly educated/drop-out pioneer gentrifiers - ... Read more...
30 September 2015
This was based on a study by Professor Paul Cheshire, of the London School of Economics, which declared that... This article was published by The Times on September 30, 2015 [Subscription needed to view article.] Re... Read more...
Similar work by Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber, of the London School of Economics, estimated that in the early 2000s this regulatory shadow tax was roughly 300% in Milan and Paris, 450% in the City of London, and 800... Read more...
22 June 2015
Paul Cheshire discusses using limited amount of London's green belt for housing. The interview was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 News on June 14, 2015 [No link available.] Related Publications The Green Belt: A Plac... Read more...
14 June 2015
Britain's politicians say they are keen to reward aspiration, but soaring house prices are a significant block to achieving this. Professor Christian Hilber, from the London School of Economics, explains to Ferdinando Gi... Read more...
09 June 2015
Partly as a result London house prices per square foot are now the second highest in the world after Monaco, according to the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance. The problem is acute: the average... Read more...
02 June 2015
Both labour and its opponents make too much of a new policy Labour made two housing policy commitments over the weekend, only one of which was interesting. The uninteresting one was the promise to cut stamp duty for fir... Read more...
27 April 2015
The stereotype of concrete London is misleading: a fifth of all land in the Greater London Authority is green belt, according to a report by the London School of Economics, business group London First and planning firm Q... Read more...
27 February 2015
Building an economy upon a massive and growing distortion in the market for land is foolish In a recent paper, Christian Hilber of the London School of Economics and Wouter Vermeulen of the Netherlands bureau for econom... Read more...
05 February 2015
Britain has prized the ideal of economically mixed neighbourhoods since the 19th century. Poverty and disadvantage are intensified when poor people cluster, runs the argument; conversely, the rich are unfairly helped whe... Read more...
29 January 2015
Consider the example of planning policy. On one side of the barricades, there are those opposed to new development - perhaps not in general, but certainly when it comes to any specific attempt to build much-needed new h... Read more...
21 January 2015
LONDON GREENBELT: The London Society was instrumental in formulating London's Green Belt in the 20th century. Tonight, near Farringdon, it hosts a debate about the future of London's Green Belt with Jonathan Manns on beh... Read more...
07 December 2014
Paul Cheshire discusses housing affordability and need to build new housing. This interview was broadcast by BBC South on November 6, 2014 (no link available) Also on: BBC Radio Oxford Related links Paul Ches... Read more...
06 November 2014
Professor Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics, has written that ''the unstoppable damage they do to societal fairness, housing affordability, the economic efficiency of our cities, even the environment, is de... Read more...
19 October 2014
Alluding to research from the London School of Economics, which showed more of Surrey if devoted to golf courses than housing, Dr Cable said if he was in a middle-income family struggling to find a home in the county, he... Read more...
16 October 2014
New homes should be built on golf courses in an attempt to solve the housing crisis, Vince Cable has suggested. ... Dr Cable was responding to a study by the London School of Economics which suggested that more of Surrey... Read more...
08 October 2014
Liberalisation of planning could therefore lower house prices and rents directly, and there would be a direct boost to building growth. But the real gains would come through a fall in the cost burden associated with prop... Read more...
16 September 2014
Only 10 per cent of the value of land in expensive cities is due to its natural scarcity. The rest is planning restrictions. Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber at the London School of Economics applied the same trick to ... Read more...
16 July 2014
Presenter quotes an earlier appearance by Paul Cheshire on the BBC's 'Sunday Politics Show' discussing the use of the green belt for new housing sites. This mention was on the BBC Radio Bristol News on July 11, 2014... Read more...
11 July 2014
Article by Francesco Caselli, Angus Armstrong, Jaghit Chadha and Wouter den Haan How should UK policy-makers respond to potential dangers to the economy from the housing market? As this column reports, a majority of res... Read more...
08 July 2014
The Government's Help to Buy scheme was also helping first time buyers move into the market, she added but Prof. Cheshire rejected the measures as ''putting fingers in dykes''. ''The help to buy scheme is simply a rec... Read more...
06 July 2014
Barry Sheerman MP mentioned LSE report which highlighted percentage of greenbelt land which could be used for housing. The broadcast was made by BBC Parliament on June 30, 2014 Related publications Turning houses ... Read more...
30 June 2014
As Prof Paul Cheshire points out in London School of Economics journal Centrepiece, more of the county of Surrey is devoted to golf courses than houses. Just 10 per cent of England is built up, and gardens cover nearly h... Read more...
19 June 2014
Stephen Stone, chief executive officer of Crest Nicholson Holdings Plc and Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at London School of Economics, discuss U.K. property prices, planning laws and building on green-b... Read more...
17 June 2014
According to Professor Paul Cheshire, you could build 1.6 million homes at average densities if just a fraction of that greenbelt space, much of it riding schools and golf courses, were reclassified. This article was... Read more...
16 June 2014
A debate on why Britain is failing to build enough homes and how best to fix the problem which was held at LSE. Speakers included Paul Cheshire. This programme was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on June 11, 2014 Link... Read more...
11 June 2014
Paul Cheshire talks about the housing crisis. The interview was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on the World at One show on June 6, 2014 Link to programme here Also on: Heart Northampton B... Read more...
06 June 2014
Paul Cheshire discusses need for more housing on greenbelts. This interview was broadcast by BBC Berkshire on May 14, 2014 No link available. Related publications Turning houses into gold: the failure of Britis... Read more...
14 May 2014
Green belt polices that aim to keep ''the urban unwashed out of the Home Counties'' are causing a housing affordability crisis, according to a London School of Economics (LSE) professor. Britain's booming house prices ha... Read more...
02 May 2014
Organised by British Governement@ LSE and LSE London, this event forms part of the LSE Hot Topics series. House prices in Britain remain exceptionally high. We urgently need more housing, but where should we build it? C... Read more...
26 June 2012
Since 1997, the Labour government has spent considerable sums trying to narrow the gap between poor areas - neighbourhoods, cities and regions - and the rest. The latest CEP Election Analysis from the Centre for Economic... Read more...
26 April 2010