The government’s housing white paper identifies the delivery rate of new homes, once planning permission has been granted, as ‘too slow’ and a ‘major problem’. This is a welcome new consideration within Whitehall, to join longstanding and equally valid concerns about bottlenecks in the planning system. The proposals it suggests for tackling slow development include: removing the practical barriers to development that are identified by developers; requiring greater transparency about build rates; weeding out planning applications that are unlikely to result in a start; using compulsory purchase powers on sites that have stalled. These are all useful steps in the right direction. The white paper fails to address, however, a key barrier to speedier delivery by developers: the market absorption rate. Developers can only build homes as quickly as they can sell them and, in the current framework, they must sell them at current market prices or above. This limits for-sale house building output, which has been in long-term decline as house prices have raised. The problem lies in the price that is paid for the land, which is calculated on the basis of current house prices. This locks the developer into a conservative build rate which cannot exceed the rate at which people are able to buy new homes at current market prices. A site of 1,500 homes may then be built at a rate of 80-90 homes a year, for example, the development taking 15-20 years to complete.