ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the flow of output of new houses for sale to owner-occupiers. The rest of the house is built by sub-contract specialist trades. Since the nineteenth century the speculative housebuilding industry has witnessed substantial technological advance. A systematic treatment of speculative housebuilding would be a massive work in itself and at the time of writing no such volume has yet been published. The construction industry is one of the country’s largest economic sectors and in 1980 contributed more than 6 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product. The larger builders often produce a standard portfolio of house types which cover the first-time buyer, trading-up purchasers and retirement bungalows, ‘from cradle to the grave’ as one developer.
