Industrial House-Building Revolution is seen as UK's Solution to Real Estate Market Failure

A complete housing overhaul is the solution to the United Kingdom's real estate market failure and political and social concerns, an article from City AM stated.

The government has a massive plan to commission 60,000 houses with half of this number starter homes by 2020. Aside from tackling land shortage, there are more problems to deal with such as production, financing and cultural concerns that should be simultaneously dealt with to be able to construct at least 250,000 homes each year.

To start, Legal & General has made progress with the acquisition of CALA Homes and plans to improve its revenue over four years with dramatic investments such as student accommodation, key-worker homes, care homes and houses especially developed for the private sector.

Around 250,000 houses by 2020 is an achievable goal if the following would be considered:

More vocational training for material skills such as bricklaying, roofing, electrical work and so on should be prioritized. Traditional building methods is not the only way, modern techniques such as off-site assembly is popular in commercial buildings and this will completely overhaul residential manufacturing. It will increase home construction to 170,000 traditionally-built and 80,000 modern houses by 2020 which may be the only realistic way to hit the 250,000-homes target.

Government housing strategies are always about convincing people to own homes rather than improving rental housing. Renting will definitely stay and needs to become better to improve the industry.

Developing better rental accommodation for key workers such as nurses, on under-used NHS land is more efficient compared to constructing discounted flats for first-time home buyers.

Long-term funds with obvious liabilities to finance rental homes would allow rents to be capped for specific accommodation types. The government should also consider helping first-time buyers. UL needs a housebuilding revolution to improve the supply and quality for all forms of tenure and also for people with different incomes and age groups.