London, Merseyside and Manchester green belts boast most brownfield sites, with Buckingham, Cheshire and Tandridge the top counties for building potential.
The Merseyside and the Greater Manchester green belt area boasts the second highest number of brownfield sites at 1,968. Birmingham’s green belt came third with 1,351 sites, with South and West Yorkshire close behind with 1,129 sites. Bristol and Bath and their surrounding areas offer 606 brownfield sites.
Could your house price be hit?
The supply of homes in the UK is highly inelastic, which means it doesn’t respond much to changes in demand. This is because it’s very difficult to build homes in the UK because of restrictions on planning and the areas of land that can be built upon.
So if demand for property goes up – as it has for decades – prices follow, and sharply.
Demand for homes is also highly inelastic – people will always want to buy them, even if prices increase substantially. Prices were widely forecast to crash in 2023, with soaring mortgage costs and a cost of living crisis predicted to deter buyers and cause a double digit market fall. Yet prices dipped just 1.8pc over the year, according to Nationwide.
Even if the supply of homes increases at a faster rate, demand for property is so strong – and supply is still so stiff – experts believe there will be little impact on price.
Christian Hilber, professor of economic geography at London School of Economics, said: “Even if the incoming government were to deliver and were successful in creating a building boom, this is unlikely to have a dramatic adverse effect on prices.
“We haven’t built enough houses for 40 or 50 years now – one or two years of a building boom won’t reverse that. We would need a sustained substantial increase in construction over several years to achieve that.
“I think it’s more likely that increased construction numbers will have a small dampening effect on long run house price growth. Welcome in terms of housing affordability, but these are moderate effects rather than dramatic ones.”
However, he added that some parts of the country were more vulnerable to dips.
“If new homes are built in regions where housing affordability is less of an issue – chiefly the North and North East of England, unlike London and the South East – it’s possible that prices there could fall.”
This is because weaker demand for homes may not be sufficient in maintaining strong price growth.