1 An appendix setting out the details of the model equations can be found on the author's web site at http://www.reading.ac.uk/economics/about/staff/g-p-meen.aspx 2 See Meen (2010) for a discussion of the issues. 3 Over the period 1971 to 2009, the UK trend rate rose to over 3% pa.2007 recession, but access to housing for first-time buyers did not improve, because of the shortage of mortgage funds. Although the user cost of capital can, in principle, take account of credit restrictions, price/earnings ratios do not. The importance of the different measures for policy is discussed further in Section 5. 4 The NHPAU was disbanded by the new coalition government in June 2010.