Yolande Barnes

Yolande is the Director of Savills Research. She joined Savills in 1989 as Head of Residential Research, and was made a Divisional Director in 1994. She is now accountable for all Savills research departments and heads up the Land and Mixed Development department.

The Savills Research team is an established one, with 15 years experience in advising major public and private sector organisations. Their clients include investing institutions, development companies, land owners, government agencies, local authorities, registered landlords, charitable organisations, private individuals regional development agencies and others. They provide reports, information and presentations that help clients to save or make money from real estate projects, and which also help to inform policy and shape strategies.

Yolande is a Geography graduate from University College London who has extensive experience in property research, having previously worked at Healey and Baker as an office and industrial property analyst.

Having established a research function looking at the commercial and market realities of the residential property market, she is now pioneering ways of analysing mixed use development, land and regeneration issues along with some research into niche real estate markets such as hotels and serviced apartments.

Yolande provides consultancy services to a variety of private and public sector clients including developers, investors, public bodies, housing associations, government departments, commissions, charities, trade associations, landowners and lending institutions. Most of her previous work has been in modelling, forecasting and studying residential property from a variety of viewpoints. Her latest work has been focussed on land and development issues including:

Quantifying the demand for and the premises needed to accommodate neighbourhood commercial and neighbourhood retail uses

Assessing the type and mix of different uses needed to make a large mixed use site viable, sustainable and to create a sense of place

• Examining the impact on housing design and layout on commercial development value
• Modelling and forecasting land price trends
• Complex land value impacts and modelling
• Studies of new and emerging markets
• Studies of land supply, demand and the process of land release
• Studies of development densities, massing and volume in different place types

Yolande also produces regular reports on mixed use issues, development trends, land values, the London hotels and serviced apartment markets and the alternative uses of land in cities. She has been widely quoted in the national and international press and appeared on television and radio.

Yolande is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Director of Design for Homes and Local Space, a founding member of the Society of Property Researchers and a member of the Urban Land Institute. She currently sits on SEERA's Retail and Town Centre task group and a Joseph Rowntree Foundation policies and practices advisory group.

Website: www.savills.co.uk/research/

e-mail: ybarnes@savills.com

14.00 to 15.30 on Friday 18 May 2007

Land markets and housing supply: How the regulation of place impacts on value

Summary

Residential development land is a scarce commodity, and becoming scarcer, and so land value growth permanently outstrips house price growth. The type and cost of land available has a dramatic impact on the nature and type of housing supply, so certain types of homes simply aren't being built. Extreme supply scarcity drives values and also ensures that almost anything built will sell.

There are clear indications that superior quality of homes and places does create value, but the commercial incentive to build the homes and places that people want is limited by planning and other regulatory activity. In the few areas where the planning process will allow high numbers of houses to be built, quality will be forced to rise.

The loosening of planning restrictions has a better chance of ensuring that everyone lives in a place they love, and in a home they can afford.

Land markets and housing supply: How the regulation of place impacts on value

More to follow shortly...

What priorities do we want reflected in land use planning?

Has the notion of a distinct town and country become unsustainable?

Can planners reconcile government policies with where and how people actually want to live?

Is it justified to describe policies based on constraining building activity as "planning"?

Introduction

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