How to Make City Housing Affordable Again: Introducing the SPADE Framework
Priced Out with David PralongShow Notes
A London home now costs over 11 years of pre-tax earnings. It used to cost four.
You work in the city, you pay into it, and you still can't afford to live in it. Your parents bought in their twenties. You might not leave home until 26, and buying is a 30s problem, if it happens at all.
In this episode, David Pralong lays out the case for fixing the housing crisis from the developer's side of the table. You'll get the numbers behind London property prices, why the two standard answers keep missing the middle class, and the five reforms he believes would make affordable housing possible again.
It's for renters and would-be buyers priced out of the city they love, homeowners who hold the votes, and anyone tired of slogans about the planning system.
Key Takeaways
After inflation, London homes cost three times what they did in 1995. A healthy market needs around 5% vacancy, and David puts most cities below 1%. Rent control and social housing each help one group. David explains the third group both leave behind, and why that group decides whether a city works. Paris was built on standardised designs, and David argues the same principle could take planning from case-by-case approval to pre-approved homes built in months. Key workers buying with no deposit, and streets voting to rebuild themselves, are two of the more radical ideas in the SPADE plan.
Chapter Markers
00:00 Why new generations can't afford our cities
00:45 Housing scarcity is a supply problem
01:30 London prices up seven times since 1995
02:45 Leaving home at 26, buying in your 30s
03:30 Vacancy rates below 1%
04:15 Cities as the engine of economic growth
05:15 Why nobody has fixed this yet
06:15 Where rent control and social housing fall short
07:50 The middle class nobody is helping
08:38 Introducing the SPADE framework
08:55 Standardisation and the lessons of Haussmann's Paris
11:20 Modular building and faster delivery
12:30 Protection: homes for people who live there
16:00 Affordability: social housing and key workers
18:20 Cutting build costs and development taxes
20:30 Density: building up and street votes
24:30 Enforcement: going after the bad actors
25:40 The objections David expects
27:00 Why David made this podcast
28:00 What you can do right now
Useful Links & Resources
Maya Capital: https://www.maya-cap.com/ David Pralong on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-pralong-bb7a09/
Connect With the Show
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Maya-Cap Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NpuI114H9c4QmfC4R09Pd Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/priced-out-with-david-pralong/id6821938508
Which of the five levers would you push for first in your city? And which one would you fight? Tell us in the comments. If you've been priced out of where you work, or you're a homeowner who disagrees with David, we want to hear your story. Your questions shape future episodes.
Subscribe to Priced Out so you don't miss the debates to come. Then take this conversation home to your friends and family, across every generation.
#HousingCrisis #AffordableHousing #LondonHousing #PlanningReform #UrbanPolicy
More from Priced Out with David Pralong
Paris went from a city that hadn't changed in a thousand years to the City of Light in about 15 years. What it got right and wrong still applies to housing today.
The one planning authority in Britain that reliably says yes, and what it would take for the rest of London to do the same.
You cannot afford to live in the city you work in, and everyone in the industry has a reason why that can never change. David Pralong is the exception. He has spent twenty years and more than €2bn building property across Europe, and he argues the system he knows best has ended up pricing people out of the cities that need them.