The problem is that homeowners don't want houses to be cheap, bcs their houses are a significant part of their net worth and many have mortgages secured on their house value. They are 60% of the population and they vote. So there won't be cheap housing.
https://twitter.com/worstall/status/1485930181793570818
Relaxing planning laws would make no difference to house prices, because government and the Bank of England would intervene to prevent them falling, or to pump them up again if they did fall. I have tried repeatedly to explain this but it appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
I've also explained repeatedly how banks' appetite for lending, and the peculiar nature of mortgages, means that falling house prices reduces, rather than increases, demand for houses and hence also reduces supply as builders and sellers withdraw from the market.
But this also falls on deaf ears, because those who want cheap housing determinedly refuse to recognise that in the UK, property is not a consumption good but an investment asset, and people don't buy investment assets unless they think their prices will rise.
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