We explore the impact of different types of supply constraints on house prices in England by exploiting a unique panel dataset of 353 local planning authorities ranging from 1974 to 2008. Using exogenous variation from a policy reform, vote shares and historical density to identify the endogenous constraints-measures, we find that: i) Regulatory constraints have a substantive positive impact on the house price-earnings elasticity; ii) The effect of constraints due to scarcity of developable land is largely confined to highly urbanized areas; iii) Uneven topography has a quantitatively less meaningful impact; and iv) The effects of supply constraints are greater during boom than bust periods. House values in England – particularly in London and the South East of the country – are amongst the highest in the world.1 The average price of a single detached freehold house in Kensington and Chelsea in 2008 – the last year of our sample period – was £4.3M (8.6M in 2008 US dollars). Of course, the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea is extraordinary in many respects. However, house values were also extremely high in less exceptional places. The mean price of an equivalent house in Richmond, a nice ‘greenish’ London suburb was £1.2M; in the rather distressed but maybe transforming London borough of Hackney it still fetched £767k. Perhaps most astonishingly, even in rural places (e.g., Cotswold in the West of England; £470k) and in struggling cities (e.g., Birmingham in the West Midlands; £353k) house prices are very high by international standards.2 These statistics are even more astounding when housing size is taken into account. A new-build house is 38 percent smaller in the UK than in densely populated Germany and 40 percent smaller than in the even more densely populated Netherlands (Statistics Sweden, 2005).