The Scottish property market faces a 10-year backlog, needing 80,000 new homes to bolster an industry damaged by a current undersupply of new homes and subsequent house price inThation. RICS has written to the Scottish Parliament Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning, Kevin Stewart MSP, and parliamentary housing spokespeople to ask them to prioritise alternative solutions to housing development aimed at supporting self- and custom-build.
The reasons for the current undersupply are numerous, but RICS has long called for the government to explore other avenues for housing development to widen house building participation, across all tenures, to meet demand.
Making meaningful inroads to tackling the housing crisis cannot be done through intensifying the current ‘business as usual’ approach. For Scotland to make serious headway into building the quantum of homes required to meet demand, there needs to be innovation in government policy and parliamentary legislation.