D.B. Needham

Institutions for Housing Supply

Institutions for housing supply are the rules, practices, and expectations by which the activities are coordinated of the agents involved in the supply of (new) housing. Coordination is desirable both for the private interests of these agents and in the public interest. Some of these institutions are regulated under private law, such as the rules for transfer of landownership, tenure, and property rights. Other formal institutions are regulated under private law, such as building regulations, land-use planning, and provision of social housing. In a mature country, these rules tend to stabilise into a coherent housing system. Such a system is difficult to change, for example with new rules for improving housing supply. Yet the rules have great effects on matters of great social importance, such as what is built, where, its price and quality, for whom the housing is built, the structure of the house-building industry, and the morphology of housing estates.