[heero_yuy]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

But they're not set by the market because the market is being manipulated if it was genuinely being set by the market we'd see houses being built to satisfy the demand

You seem to be forgetting things like planning permission, lack of finance, lack of skilled trades persons, lack of raw materials, inertia, NIMBYism etc. There are any number of reasons that house building doesn't go ballistic.

Perhaps the most unmentionable is just like the argument against new roads: cars will come to drive on them. Build more houses and people will flock from everywhere to fill them.

What we really need to do is to use the existing stock more efficiently. Time was when several generations lived in a single small property. Now we have singles living in multibedroomed properties. Something the so called "bedroom tax" was bought in to try and solve.

Of course if we had a fully Soviet Stallinist government and all housing was owned by the state then people would be forced to move to properties deemed sufficient for their needs and also forced to share with others if there were spare bedrooms. Problem solved.