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The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

In the first Labour budget for years, nothing seems to have been included to deal with the burgeoning house price crisis which is hurting the nation’s economy by becoming an inflationary drag on society.

The following remedies are designed to correct the housing markets by enabling sufficient affordability to be maintained for those working locally.

Did you know that a substantial part of the price of a house today is based on the value of the land beneath it!

What if, instead of property developers having to pay inordinate sums of money to acquire land for residential development, a new Bill could be introduced in Parliament such that any land gaining planning consent for residential use would become rated as having a nil or nominal value. This would break the continual upwards trajectory of the price of housing. This is the first or (No1) proposal.

You may well ask, how have ‘I’ (one person or individual), come to know exactly what to do and which way to turn in order to resolve matters of this degree of specialisation? The answer is that I chose surveying and valuation as my career in my 20’s and commenced in a training job back in the 60’s, working amongst qualified surveyors already knowing all of these things. I chose this as my career, in challenging times, taking five or so years to qualify as a surveyor myself and be able to put such knowledge into use advising the public throughout the rest of my life. As I’m now retired, I can give commentary to what I have come to know over my career resulting in being able to diagnose and cure the present and housing crisis issues relating to various aspects of land, buildings, law, planning and economics and crucially, I understand how to use valuation as being the overriding tool required for resolving the housing price issues which are becoming a problem to society at large these days.
To continue …

The second or (No2) proposal that requires debate and action is a change in The Town and Country Planning rules so that all local town and parish planning committees are involved in actively deciding where residential development should be allowed in order to satisfy local demand for housing in their respective areas. They should not only compile these, in consultation with their regional planning authority (as they currently do), and consistently refer to their updated Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs) when considering validated planning applications but local town and parish planning should be fully empowered to decide all applications for residential development, or for a change to residential use. This would save a great deal of time and wasted effort.

A Neighbourhood Development Plan is a document generated in a consultation between the regional planning authority and each local Town and Parish council. It would be designed to show, among other things, which land should have a particular residential user consent attached to it. The primary purpose of having (NDPs) is to augment and sustain economic growth in the local area concerned.

The change proposed would empower all town and parish councils to decide all residential planning applications relating to their areas.

Bringing in this change would save the need, and the cost and usefulness, of using the planning inspectorate to hear appeals against locally determined planning refusals, as currently happens.

It is suggested however that the Secretary of State should still retain the right to call individual planning applications in, whenever doing so is deemed essential but the primary responsibility for making each residential planning decision in the first place would be fully in  the hands of the relevant Town and Parish Council which would use their local knowledge to the full.

It is suggested that to resolve disputes arising between a Town or Parish Council and any opposition over its decision to approve or reject any particular planning application, there ought to be provision for formal arbitration to take place, upon application by the parties instead of these matters going before The Planning Inspectorate.

The effect of simultaneously removing the cost of land from the equation and giving Town and Parish Councils the responsibility to decide all residential planning applications in their area, would be to increase the supply of developable land for housing in a controlled way, by stopping land-hoarding for this purpose. It would break the incentive for owners and/or developers to hoard land for residential development. 

The benefit would be to reduce the overall cost of new housing and therefore help to lower the price of existing residential property also. Doing that would allow more potential home owners to become able to purchase housing and become owner occupiers. In this way more people could be housed and also the nation’s homelessness could be reduced.

As a retired property valuer and surveyor, qualified to be formulating this petition, I’m doing this because I understand that the increasing price of housing across many parts of the country is ‘a negative cost’ as far as the national economy is concerned which means that as house prices increase, less of the present demand for housing will be satisfied in the marketplace because more and more people will be simply unable to afford to purchase suitable housing for themselves. That’s what is happening at present, resulting in many families and individuals having to rent the housing needed from private landlords to maintain roofs over their heads. This has of course resulted in an extreme shortage of council and of housing association property for rent in Britain. Yet it is equally significant that there are large numbers of empty and unused properties which are privately owned. It is these under-used resources that the proposals in this petition are designed to get utilised. 

An important aspect of this is that where there is very high demand for housing and an inadequate level of supply in the market, extreme price hikes generally result. This justifies an argument in favour of taking the price of the land upon which housing is built, out of the equation and down to a nominal value. Doing this would help to lower house prices where the conditions of high and unsatisfied demand exists alongside inadequate supply of homes, both for sale and to let. It would be a real game changer.

In addition there would be a significant saving both in the time taken to determine such planning applications and the financial cost of The Planning Inspectorate having to deciding these on appeal, as these would be dealt with more quickly by the relevant local Town and Parish Councils, thus speeding up the whole planning process for residential planning consents.

To explain the technical aspect of this in brief; all land would still be owned freehold or leasehold but any change of user would be treated as development under the planning rules and such development of land would require planning permission This is not however much different from what should already be happening under the existing planning rules, one should venture to say!

NOTICE TO OUR GOVERNMENT:
Doing this would be a way to avoid the apparent need for the government to change the fiscal rules, so that they are no longer warned when extra borrowing would have shown up under the earlier fiscal rules.

The third or (No3) proposal in this petition would also be an improvement for reducing the cost of housing. It hinges on shortening the time it takes for sales and purchases to result in successful completions.

To achieve this, instead of having estate agents advising sellers, there should be newly formed businesses advising buyers on the house buying or renting process and finding them the most suitable houses they might want to move into. This would bring far greater interest in the agent helping the buyer or renter regarding such an important transaction. This would much improve the relationship between those moving in to their next homes and the agent whom will have done the work of finding the house and advising them right through to the actual completion of the transaction.

It would help reduce the stress of moving, by changing the methods currently used when vendors market residential property and in doing so would make property marketing considerably more efficient. The precise way this could be achieved is set out on my web site which fully explains the finer details of all of that.

The effect of these three proposals combined would be that the prices of new housing would be brought to within reach of many more families and individuals wishing to become owners in their own right.

I would describe this as being the golden-nugget solution for resolving the existing housing crisis which has, to date, been an insuperable problem resulting in a lack of housing affordability. This has blocked whole generations of our young from becoming home owners certainly in England and Wales for as long as I can remember.

The complete remedy for this does require bold changes to bring in a combination of these three new and economically competitive policies. Doing so would remove the inertia in both the existing planning and the existing marketing processes in residential development which are gripping housing markets across large parts of Britain at present.

Under these proposals new housing units could be built in the right locations through more efficient planning as well as improved house marketing precesses resulting in more competitive house pricing becoming a reality.

Much unsatisfied demand for more housing could become satisfied in this way.

An extra and additional advantage of adopting these three policies would be to help the regional local authorities to obtain greater contributions from developers by way of S106 agreements, therefore increasing contributions towards the cost of much needed new infrastructure.

If you agree that these proposals should be debated in Parliament please sign this petition and also if possible please write to your elected MP, to ask them to raise the matter in The House. This is the best way of getting a debate on this long overdue issue and to get the necessary changes properly and fully considered.

As explained above, these proposals would bring the necessary efficiency improvements to both the Town and Country Planning rules and in the way housing is marketed, whether for sale or for rent. Both of these shortcomings are in desperate need of change, in order to enable more housing to be provided in the correct locations and in the most timely and appropriate way.

As a plus, I am confident that if these changes were brought in, people moving between houses at the higher end of the market, should not be out of pocket as a result.

Secondly, those at the lower end would see considerably lower prices, helping them to climb onto the property-owning ladder. Lower rental values would also be a spin-off effect from this.

Thirdly, the overall cost of building new houses would be noticeably reduced as a result of these proposals.

Fourthly, sales throughput of all forms of residential property would increase as its affordability itself themselves increase.

This stimulus is the very thing needed to get housing sales flourishing and new house building increasing once again.

This site proposes changes to the whole way in which houses are marketed as well as bringing in more effective planning controls.

For more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The House Price Solution

How to Improve all local housing markets in England and Wales

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution

Your comments on this subject would be appreciated.

Unless things change significantly and along the lines explained here, countless people will experience unnecessary pain and trauma so please sign our petition under the link:

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The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

This would help bring about this much needed change.

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A one-page synopsis of ‘The House Price Solution’, especially for newcomers

Welcome to The House Price Solution. This web site is campaigning for a change to the new government’s policy on having Top Down housing targets.

The purpose of this website is to stimulate debate and help find collectively, the best way to bring house prices back to within reach of a majority of those wishing and needing to buy (or indeed rent) housing for themselves and their families.

This is the alternative to simply trying to out-build housing demand, until prices reduce to lower levels; for that will never work!

I have a new and comprehensive planning and marketing solution which can resolve this problem. I merely ask that this is given due consideration by our new government.

The proposals set out on this website are future generational, based upon a detailed analysis of house price levels by the author as found to exist during historic and damaging economic turbulence in Britain.

The object of these proposals is to replace existing flawed sales and planning methods with new ones, designed to avoid the effects of unwanted future price escalation within all British housing markets. This would be the advantage of deploying The House Price Solution.

Having been in contact with my own MP about it, I am hoping for a referral of my alternative proposal to The Secretary of State at The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I would like to generate some in-depth discourse on this, important and earnest submission, before very long.

I am also hoping that the Civil Service responsible for advising government on housing policy, together with this considerate Labour government, which has just been elected, will consider and fully examine these special new policy proposals for remedying the present housing crisis.

The first question to ask is, how can my solution help?

There are two aspects. The first is about how to make all local housing markets across Britain work like free-market economic models.

This would involve replacing estate agency as we know it with a new, better and properly licensed service which I am calling Residential House Agents or (RHAs). This is the first radical change. These buyer and renter-advising agents would primarily work for buyers and renters instead of for sellers, as happens at present.

The job of these new Residential House Agents (RHAs) would be not only to sell or indeed let individual owner’s houses but more importantly would find and secure the houses which their contracted client(s) are seeking both for themselves and their families – whether such clients are wishing to buy or to rent.

Individual RHAs working with clients would need to have gained an approved new qualification showing their level of competence. The reason for this is that the existing estate agency service breaks the economic market rules and generally talks prices up. This skews all residential property marketplaces by over-valuing most of the individual houses and flats. This is a fundamental misrepresentation and is damaging all the housing marketplaces across Britain.

What is needed instead is a service that records all genuine offers (whether to buy or to rent), and immediately submits these to the relevant vendor (or the landlord if for rentals), for consideration. After the decision is made and one of the offers is accepted by the vendor or the landlord, the RHA handling this will arrange for a pre-worded lock-out agreement or contract with that vendor as well as with their legal adviser such that they all agree not to accept any other offer for the agreed period of time that it should take for the conveyancing to be concluded (or the tenancy agreement if its a letting). In essence a newly prescribed lock-out agreement.

Once the sale or letting is completed in this way, the RHA would collect their fee from the satisfied buyer or renter, via the solicitor dealing with completing the transaction (or from the landlord if appropriate). See the other articles on the website explaining this in more detail.

One other key advantage of introducing these proposals would be that there would no longer be a need for a Council Tax Revaluation, as this method of valuation would be superseded by the market valuation procedures set down in these new proposals. This, in itself, would save the government a great deal of money as well as civil servant time.

The second radical change, deals with the town and country planning rules relating to residential property. What it proposes is the substantial change necessary to make the best and most efficient use of all housing units, whether already built, or yet to be constructed.

A main reason for this is that housing is in great demand as well as in unprecedentedly short supply. As a result, each viable existing housing unit should be zoned within the local Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP), such that whenever that property becomes vacant (and/or changes hands), the appropriate NDP zoning for that house or flat must take effect. For example, if the house was previously used as a second home, but it has subsequently become zoned on the NDP for local housing use, then after the vacation of the property, the new use must comply with the current NDP zoning. Enforcement action could follow wherever this is not the case.

Clearly, because it is the local town or parish council that draws up local NDPs, the best organisation to administer this would be that same one. I therefore propose that all residential planning decisions should be devolved to each local town or parish council to have them determined exclusively and in accord with their adopted NDP.

This would mean the existing arrangements for regional councils to decide such planning applications would no longer be needed, which is a third radical change, one designed to speed up planning decisions a great deal.

As a result, there would no longer be a need for government planning inspectors to deal with residential planning appeals centrally. In other words there would be no need for an appeal process for individual residential planning matters anymore. This would save inordinate amounts of time as well as great expense and bring much needed clarity, as to exactly which use designation each residential property should have, for the vital benefit of the town or parishes’ local housing economy, primarily of course.

For more on this please follow the link below:

The house price affordability crisis

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution, otherwise known as The Hendry Solution.

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Kick-starting economic growth is now top of the agenda 

Angela Rayner is reported to have said (30 July 24), “Britain was facing the most acute housing crisis in living memory”. This appears to acknowledge that there is an underlying failure within the housing markets of Britain, well beyond dealing with the rented sector and that this needs to be fully realised and addressed.

As an experienced professional in the property sector I have developed a new and comprehensive planning and marketing solution which can resolve this problem. I merely ask that this is given due consideration by government.

Having been in contact with my own MP about it, I am hoping for a referral of my alternative proposal to The Secretary of State at The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I would like to generate some in-depth discourse on this, most earnest submission, before long please.

The first question is:- How can my solution help?
It can do so by enabling more buyers, especially first-time ones, to purchase their property for less, rather than being required to borrow more then they can afford. This would mean people’s earnings would enable them to purchase essentials like housing for themselves more easily.

The cost of living would become lower as a result of the changes being proposed, meaning manufacturing and business could become more competitive allowing increased sales of products for export.

This may seem counterintuitive at first sight but it would in fact be a direct way of boosting exports.

The second question is:- How could median house price levels be lowered?
By improving the way houses are marketed, so that prices would depend more on each individual’s level of affordability rather than each having to rely upon borrowing increasingly eye-watering amounts of capital against the property being purchased by way of obtaining increasingly large mortgage loans!

The way this could be done, in brief, would be for buyers to submit arms-length offers (or bids) not to the present-day estate agents but to newly licensed and trained residential house agents (RHAs), contracted to act for them in seeking the best house for their needs.

The job of these new Residential House Agents (RHAs) would be not only to sell or indeed let owner’s houses but more importantly to find and secure the houses which their contracted client(s) are seeking both for themselves and their families – whether these clients are wishing to buy or to rent.

This would be a significant departure from the present system where the seller appoints an estate agent employed by them to obtain the best possible offers (including helping each buyer to borrow as much as mortgage lenders might be willing to lend to the buyer against the property deeds, to be held by the lender as their security).

A knock-on effect if such a new RHA regime, were to be brought in, would be to reduce the land value aspect of each property valuation. By doing this; developers could continue to build at economically viable development costs. This is a well known aspect of residential property valuation.

Reading this, you will no doubt appreciate that matters relating to house price levels are actually somewhat more complicated than they may be at first sight. Surveyors and valuers are aware to this but in my experience, many estate agents sadly are not.

My knowledge of all of this is based upon my valuation training and approximately 30 years experience as a residential property valuer and front line surveyor.

This allows me to isolate ways of enabling lower house prices without adversely affecting the profit level of builders and developers expected to maintain the levels of quality of housing desired, yet allowing the affordability of most housing to improve, at this highly critical time.

For more on this please follow the link below:

The house price affordability crisis

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution, otherwise known as The Hendry Solution.

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The House Price Crisis, The Present Dilemma Over Estate Agents, and The Politics Governing Planning

The result of the general election is the best opportunity to remedy the ongoing house price crisis. It is all about affordability, affordability, affordability for those buying or renting housing to live in, as it forms a major part of the cost of living crisis.

Of course a significant amount of new housing needs to be built to compensate for the growing population but doing that is not going to reduce house prices by much and maybe not by anything at all. The reason for this is explained in our online post headed “The notion that we can build our way out of The Housing Affordability Crisis is utter nonsense”

The following explains the precise reasons why the present house price crisis is manifestly not as a result of the insufficient numbers of new houses being constructed – contrary to widespread belief! Also without additional community infrastructure, substantial new housing will simply worsen the infrastructure shortfall.

It seems that most political parties today support the idea of house prices increasing over time and it also appears that currently, no political parties are prepared to canvass on or sanction a reduction of house prices in their manifestos, even though the increase in house prices to the heady levels we are currently experiencing is as a direct result of the policies which previous governments have been pursuing!

My working experience includes over 30 years as a Chartered Surveyor with a property valuation qualification and during that time I observed the house price trends, both privately and professionally. Having done this I find these price trends strongly suggest that the relentless increase in house prices of past decades is more to do with the way estate agents have been legally allowed to operate against the natural economic market trends for some decades now.

If one considers, even for a short while, why it is that the general public maintain such a low opinion of estate agents, the answer to this quickly becomes plain.

It is that estate agents have  been and still are, in reality, treading on the toes of those trying to get clear advice for knowing the correct market price of each residential property they are concerned with, whether it’s being bought, or sold.

This is because estate agents are trying to advise their contractual clients, the sellers, as to the best price they may be able to achieve, yet at the same time they are trying to help the buyers by basically doing precisely the same, namely advising them all about the prices they (the sole agent) have in their minds’ eye for the property which they are wishing to sell at the time! This is providing a distorted view of true or current market values, which is how market prices are continually being distorted.

In other words, what is actually happening is that estate agents basically guess at a price that a particular property might sell for in the market and, they tend to guess high so as to try not to bring themselves into disrepute; an uncomfortable situation for any organisation to find themselves in at any one time let alone all the time.

In  addition, as they are mostly paid on a percentage of the price attained, they usually try and get as much as they can from each prospective buyer, even if there are sometimes no genuine or actual ‘other’ offers being submitted! It is simply too tempting for them to do this and bolster their fee; however best intentioned they may well aim to be.

This shows that estate agents, as advisers, cannot reliably assist either the seller, or the buyer with accurate market value analysis, because of the situation in which they find themselves, with their primary responsibility favouring the vendor.

The only solution to overcome the resultant adverse market position which the house-owning and renting public find themselves grappling with, is to campaign for a change to the way residential estate agents operate, by making them primarily responsible to professionally advise each buyer, (or each renter if the house is for rent), as to the price any particular property can attract in current open market conditions. 

To do this estate agents would have to be made essentially to contract with each buyer (or each renter), and no longer have any business contracts dealing with potential selling, or letting clients at all.

This simple change would bring untold and immense improvement by restoring open market conditions for residential property being bought or sold on the market as well as being rented or let. 

Not to change this now would simply allow the present regime to continue unabated. The tragedy, i.e. that of accelerating house prices, if allowing such a thing to happen, should now be plain for all to see. This is what we are experiencing, the present and extreme house price crisis. Available finance to buy at such historically high prices is another significant factor which is helping to stabilise house prices at the levels being negotiated by all the selling agents.

Extremely high house prices like these are factually connected with three of the other top 5 issues for voters. This elevates the housing crisis to become one of the top priorities now requiring a swift solution.

No political party taking part in the 2024 general election has, in its party manifesto, a realistic proposal to deal with house price levels which are now in a very substantial crisis, when taking into account the relatively low average yearly earnings benchmark, certainly regarding wages within England and Wales.

It must, of course, be accepted that changing the way houses are currently marketed will receive staunch objection by those in the present estate agency sector. Instead of attempting to agree or disagree however, it would be better that such important matters as these should be the subject of constructive dialogue in order to arrive at an acceptable and improvement solution. As the author of The House Price Solution I would like to take part in any such discussions.

The other equally important change necessary to peg house prices back to reasonably affordable levels is to make changes to the town and country planning rules such that local town and parish councils should decide all residential planning applications within their designated areas without a right of appeal. This would bring much needed housing to the exact locations within the towns and parishes where extra housing is most needed, especially for local working families. This aspect is fully covered on the other posts within this web site.

The political party that is handed the mantle of governing our country should not only understand the dilemma which everyone is in housing-wise, (namely that average house prices are now well in excess of 15 times yearly average earnings), but that the new government should be able to properly understand the housing markets’ economic landscape and resolve to develop and use this necessary wisdom combined with the powers they will have.

It is becoming clear that all towns and parishes with a housing crisis like St Ives & Porthleven in Cornwall, The South Hams in Devon, Ilfracombe in North Devon (as screened on BBC Spotlight on 30th July 2024), as well as Frome in Somerset and Whitby in North Yorkshire, should canvass for fully devolved planning decision-making powers to be provided to local town and parish councils up and down the whole country. 

The towns named above have been in the news lately as being unable to resolve the crisis in housing, endemic in their regions over several decades past, where local workers as well as the retired are concerned. All this despite more powers having been devolved to their county or regional authorities over past years. This strongly suggests a wholly different planning policy is now needed.

Shortcomings such as these ought to be tackled head on. It would seem that this is an issue needing to be raised at the very highest level and without delay. So, I’m including it here as well as referring it to my local MP. You should do the same too if you think there is a similar problem in your local area.
If you want to know what to ask them, ask why they aren’t changing the way houses are both planned for and marketed, to finally resolve the poorly performing, over-priced and obdurate housing markets around the whole country?

It is important to understand that house prices are variable but should broadly relate to average yearly earning levels locally, taking into account other things such as current interest rates and acceptable mortgage term lengths. However, this can only happen once the housing markets are operating as they should, i.e. operating as arms length markets in accordance with, free market economic fundamentals.

Anyone may add their own comments to this blog if they wish to, whether in support, or otherwise and are warmly invited to do so.

For more on this please follow the link below:

The house price affordability crisis

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution, otherwise known as The Hendry Solution.

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The best thing to do to resolve the national housing crisis

A leaked set of proposals to The Guardian newspaper recently has resulted in a front page article outlining the content of a recent report by The Labour leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, Stephen Cowan, about to be sent to the Labour Party.

Among some serious issues being highlighted is the cost of living itself and the problem of rising rents deemed as a result of insufficient supply of available rental properties coming onto the market.

I think there is a lot more to this than meets the eye however.

Mr Cowan suggests solutions could range from putting restrictions on the amount of rent increases and their frequency, to possibly considering scrapping no-fault evictions.

A significant problem with these ideas would of course be that such actions are likely to further restrict the already dwindling supply of private rental property being offered on the market.

Sir Kier is said to have promised to tackle England’s housing crisis if elected as Prime Minister, in part by relying on a massive socially rented house-building programme. However, there are other alternative proposals that I would like to advance for consideration and debate.

From my viewpoint, as a retired surveyor, the best solutions to be applied should retain and nurture an open market for privately rented housing, without excessive restrictions on rent levels or discriminating against good landlords simply wishing to operate in the private rental sector. I don’t think Mr Cowan has been able to consider proposals such as the ones I have been putting forward.

Firstly, it is clear that the way houses are currently marketed via estate agents, is an economically imperfect way to do so. This has to change as a matter of urgency so that buyers and renters are considered equally in any negotiations on rents and/or prices.

What is causing the increasingly unaffordable house price increases is being driven by the fact that traditionally, house price increases are being decided in liaison with estate agents and letting agents acting solely for vendors and landlords. This is what needs to change. There needs to be open market consideration by buyers and renters so that their affordability criteria can be fed into the equation. Agents need to be tasked with balancing any price / rent increases with buyer / renter affordability in the market. Local buyers and renters ought to be included for full consideration when determining which applicant is the best applicant for the house or flat in question.

The only and long overdue answer for this would be to re-regulate the marketing of all privately owned and rented residential property by improving the way all houses are marketed both from a buyers’ and a renters’ perspective.

Secondly, it is vital as part of this to make sweeping changes to residential planning rules so that local town and parishes absolutely decide user types of all residential properties in their areas, and no one else should be involved. This could also be done with immediate effect by our central government.

It is clear that to assist with the provision of additional residential dwellings in the locations where they are most needed, important changes to the planning rules are brought in such that local town and Parish councils, (which are democratically elected), should decide the residential use classes of all the houses or residential properties in their designated areas. They could do this by putting the required classifications into the next five-year Neighbourhood Development Plans. These, once adopted, would then be decided until further superseded, as housing demand locally may fluctuate and change.

For those owning residential property that has had changes to its use class, such owners must accept that when the property is next vacated, the new use class must take effect under the Neighbourhood Development Plan then in existence.

That may mean when marketing their property, that a different class of occupier may involve a different level of affordability. The risk of this would naturally have to belong to the owner of the property concerned, not the town or Parish.

Doing this would allow local areas to be able to balance the supply of suitable properties in their area with the actual demand for these.

More about this may be found in the various articles published on this web site of course.

Whilst I was finalising these unique proposals I needed to explain, to my professional body the RICS, having qualified as a Chartered Surveyor back in 1974, all about these solutions to the housing crisis which had come to my attention. They are based upon the valuation knowledge and my market awareness gained whilst conducting my inspections mostly on behalf of buyers and renters. Unfortunately, it was clear at that time (some years ago now), that RICS was not willing to sanction these changes and instead vehemently supported the existing estate agency model which is now as old and archaic as the hills!

The only realistic possibility open to me in such circumstances seemed to be to have to resign my membership of the institution, which I rather reluctantly then did. I hoped that this might not result in my proposals being ostracised by RICS as a result, but I seemed to have had little alternative except to take such a risk at the time.

In the final analysis, there can be only one preferred solution to successfully being able to solve the existing and worsening housing crisis; namely my solution.

Having arrived at such a viable solution myself, I believe RICS ought ultimately to acknowledge the validity of this cure, along with others who will hopefully consider my alternatives with fully open minds. I remain open to discussing the details of these proposals with RICS if and when they may be interested in doing this of course.

Meanwhile, I hope the next British government might take these proposals seriously and perhaps debate these either within these pages or indeed elsewhere.

For more on this please follow the link below:

The house price affordability crisis

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution, otherwise known as The Hendry Solution.