Many of the UK’s current economic and social problems, including its housing affordability crisis, can be traced to decades of land and housing policy failures. The role of land markets is strongly dependent on institutions, including land use regulation, financial regulation and property taxation. Transformative but deleterious changes to the institutional framework in the 1980s, that have persisted until recently, have resulted in high and volatile land prices (with several booms and busts in credit and house prices). The associated speculation diverted financial flows from more productive investment, damaging growth and competitiveness, and increasing financial instability risks. Policy remedies require a holistic package. This includes planning reform, land-value capture, expanding the social housing stock and reforming a dysfunctional property tax system.

British housing systems seem trapped in a ‘perfect storm’ of rising costs, declining choice, affordability stress, and unmet need. Housing outcomes are increasingly polarised, with implications for intergenerational conflict, economic and social inequalities, and environmental sustainability. There is no easy explanation, and no quick fix. These six short reflections, shared during an interdisciplinary meeting of Fellows of the British Academy, on the origins, impacts, and future of the present housing `crisis' are thus timely provocations adding momentum to key debates. This article accompanies another in this issue, ‘The UK housing emergency: personal reflections’, by Shani Dhanda, Susan J. Smith, and Jessie Speer.