Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing

This is an excellent book and there is no point in me repeating the summaries of previous reviewers, but there is one grave omission. There is no reference to the demand side of housing provision, as primarily evidenced by the rise in population in London (just under 0.5 million in 5 years (ONS) quoted in the Guardian) and the increases in house prices and rents, the latter being a driver of the former through the buy to let market. Housing provision for a constantly growing population is a moving target and the UK is currently locked into GDP growth by population increase with stagnant productivity. I understand that the subject of population movement touches a lot of raw nerves politically, especially on the left, but I think that a complete omission of the issue in the book is wrong.

+ its willingness to challenge conventional positions; its innovative emphasis on the crucial and mostly ignored importance of land value ._ the language used is dry and aimed at students or other academics; its lack of political context and consequently its unhelpful ness to anyone interested in political change: the only way to bring sanity to the housing situation

Be prepared for some fairly serious economic theory - particularly towards the end of the book. But this is essential reading for anyone interested in how we got to our current 'broken' housing market.

Good mix of history and current policy. Author could do more to address the push pull nature of current housing policy but otherwise, great read.

Superb. Extremely lucid. Covers many aspects of the subject, from economic theories on land to analysis of current problems, and also proposes and justifies a range of solutions. I learned a lot and enjoyed reading the book.