Daily mail: Building won't solve problem
But Mulheirn disagrees. He points to official data showing that since the 1996 nadir of house prices, the English housing stock has grown by 168,000 units per year on average, while growth in the number of households has averaged 147,000 per year. Even in London and the South East, the number of houses has grown faster than the household count. As a result, while there were 660,000 more dwellings than households in England in 1996, this 'surplus' has since grown to over 1.1 million by 2018. Similar trends are also apparent in Scotland and Wales, suggested Mulheirn.