We talk endlessly about how many homes Britain needs. We spend far less time asking whether we are building the right ones.
There is a number we hear constantly when politicians talk about housing: how many new homes Britain needs to build.
It is understandable. We have a housing shortage, affordability is a huge problem and in many parts of the country there simply aren’t enough homes where people want to live.
But after more than 30 years in property, I think there is another question that deserves much more attention.
Are we actually building the homes people want to live in?
Because building more homes and solving the housing problem aren’t necessarily the same thing.
A Target Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
Housing targets are useful because they give governments something measurable.
But a completed home on a spreadsheet doesn’t tell you very much about whether it works for the person who might actually live there.
Is it affordable?
Is it in the right place?
Does it have enough storage?
Is there usable outside space?
Could a family comfortably live there for ten years rather than three?
And, perhaps most importantly, is it the type of property people in that area actually need?
These aren’t small details.
They are often the things that determine whether somebody wants to buy a property in the first place.
Buyers Notice the Practical Things
I’ve bought and sold more than 1,000 properties over the years, and one thing you learn fairly quickly is that buyers don’t experience a home as a set of statistics.
They experience it as somewhere they might have to live every day.
A beautifully finished kitchen is great.
But where does the vacuum cleaner go?
Where do you put the children’s bikes?
Can you fit a proper dining table somewhere?
What happens when somebody starts working from home?
Where do you put all the things that inevitably accumulate after living somewhere for five or ten years?
These things may sound mundane, but that’s precisely the point.
Homes are mundane.
They’re where we sleep, eat, work, store things, raise families and spend an enormous amount of our lives.
Good housing needs to work for ordinary life.
Bigger Isn’t Always the Answer Either
I’m not suggesting every new home needs another bedroom and a huge garden.
That would create another problem entirely.
There are plenty of people who actively want smaller homes.
Older homeowners who would happily downsize are an obvious example.
But downsizing only works if there is somewhere suitable to downsize to.
Someone leaving a three or four-bedroom family home may want less space, lower running costs and less maintenance.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they want a tiny flat with nowhere for a dining table, limited storage and no outside space.
If we build the right smaller homes in the right places, downsizing can free up larger properties for families further down the chain.
That is a much more useful outcome than simply adding another unit to the national total.
Affordability Still Sits Behind Everything
Of course, none of this matters if people can’t afford what is being built.
And that remains the biggest difficulty.
We can build beautifully designed homes with sensible layouts, decent storage and good transport links, but if local buyers can’t afford them, we haven’t really solved the problem.
That is why I’m increasingly uncomfortable with housing debates that focus almost entirely on a single national construction target.
Britain doesn’t just have a housing supply problem.
We have an affordability problem, a location problem, a planning problem and, in some places, a problem matching the homes available with the people who actually need them.
Building more is part of the answer.
It isn’t the whole answer.
We Need to Think About Homes, Not Units
Perhaps that’s the change in language I’d like to see.
Less discussion about units.
More discussion about homes.
A unit satisfies a target.
A home has to work for somebody.
If we’re going to spend years reforming planning, releasing land and trying to increase construction, we should make sure the end result isn’t simply a bigger number.
We should be building places that people can afford, in areas where they want to live, with enough flexibility to remain useful as their lives change.
Because hitting a housing target will make a good headline.
Building the right homes would make a much bigger difference.
About Jonathan Rolande:
Jonathan Rolande has worked in the UK property industry for more than 30 years and has bought and sold over 1,000 properties as a professional property buyer. He is the founder of the National Association of Property Buyers and regularly provides property commentary for television, radio and the national press.
