• Home
• News and Features
• Our Company
• Our People
• What We Do
  • Overall Skills and Experience
  • Affordable Housing
  • Research and Advice
    • Housing Market Analysis
    • Strategic Housing Market Assessments
    • Rural Affordable Housing Research
    • Specialist Research Projects
  • Involving People
  • Communities and Neighbourhoods that Work
  • Delivery
• Our Clients
• UK & Abroad
• Downloads
• Links
• Contact Us

Housing Market Analysis

We have a strong track record of investigating housing need and aspirations and market demand. This is achieved mainly through household surveys, focus group discussions, housing market analysis. We are leaders in our field.

 

Over the past three years, arc4 has contacted over 0.5m households through primary surveying which has resulted in wide-ranging policy advice to local authorities and evidence to support Local Development Framework documents and regeneration strategies. Since the publication of Planning Policy Statement 3 (PPS3), household survey research has generally been part of Strategic Housing Market Assessment commissions which consider housing need, affordable requirements and future aspirations.

 

We carry out Focus Group discussions on a regular basis, exploring housing-related issues with groups including younger people, older people, people with disabilities, black and minority ethnic (BAME) groups. This ensures that our work reflects the dynamics of local communities and helps promote inclusion and ensure that equalities strands are recognised in our work.

 

We adopt the following definitions of housing need and housing demand which are reflected in PPS3:

Housing need is the quantity of housing required for households who are unable to access suitable housing without financial assistance;

Housing demand is the quantity of housing that households are willing and able to buy or rent.

 

The future housing aspirations of households i.e. what do households want from their housing needs to be carefully evaluated. Although households can aspire to particular tenures, dwellings and property sizes, this needs to be reconciled with their ability to achieve their aspirations. Our research regularly considers how aspirations vary by, for example, household type, economic activity, age group and ethnicity. This helps develop appropriate policy responses. For instance, our work on home ownership solutions evidences what households can aspire to and reconciles this with their income streams to provide strategic advice on the range of products which would be appropriate for a particular neighbourhood.