The Required Rate of New Dwelling Construction

In the context of preparing a local housing plan, the concept of ‘the required rate of new dwelling construction’ is developed and critically examined in this paper. This concept can be briefly defined as the annual newbuild rate necessary in an area to achieve equality between the number of households and the net number of dwellings by the end of a local housing plan period. The argument can be seen as an extension of what is known as ‘the total stock: households method’ of interpreting the balance between a resident population and the accommodation locally available to it. The argument is made that currently the concept is not, unfortunately, of practical use because of the interaction of supply and demand; because of its aggregate character; because it is likely to suggest infeasible planning targets; and, above all, because it is a residual quantity open to very large errors in its calculation.