Advancing understandings of housing supply constraints: housing market recovery and institutional transitions in British speculative housebuilding

Abstract

The vicissitudes and volatilities of recent housing market cyclicality have restructured, reconfigured and reorganized housing systems and their supply demand characteristics. Surprisingly, little attention has been paid to (re)examining supply side outcomes, much less the influencing effect of supply behaviour in response to demand-side change and their interactions. Indeed, one of the biggest unanswered questions in housing studies today is how supply side characteristics, specifically those of speculative housebuilders, have been affected by the turbulent, transitionary context presented by the global financial crisis. Addressing the gap, this paper presents a novel analysis of how Britain’s biggest housebuilders respond to significant institutional shock in their operating environment and considers how this enables and constrains housing supply outcomes in the post-recession context.