From an article by a Faux Lib cheerleader in City AM, in short, everything would be fine if it weren't for those pesky councils!*
This a problem that has been decades in the making, largely thanks to our draconian planning laws. The passage of the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947 and the creation of the green belt has slowed the pace of housing development, and resulted in houses being built in the wrong places.
As an example, it is remarkable to me that between 2008 and 2013 twice as many houses were built in the towns of South Yorkshire, where prices were lower in 2014 than they were in 2004, than in Oxford and Cambridge, where property prices almost doubled over the same period.
Population of South Yorkshire, 1.4 million.
It's not clear whether means Oxford/Cambridge *city* or the larger *metropolitan areas* so let's give him the benefit of the doubt:
Population of Cambridge metropolitan area, 280,000.
Population of Oxford metropolitan area, 244,000
It's hardly surprising that more homes were built in South Yorkshire than in the other two towns, there is three times the population to start with. If it was only twice as many new homes, then per capita, more were being built in Oxford and Cambridge.
* NIMBYism and land banking don't exist on Planet Faux Lib. Neither does the acceptance that in pure numbers terms, new supply is more than keeping up with population growth; or that home builders have a profit maximising level and nothing on earth will make them build more. And even if they did, it would not have any marked downward effect on selling prices.
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