Housing Shortage

Why is there one?

Lack of land to build on is the reason often given. Builders who get permission to build a new housing estate then build as many as they can as close as they can for minimum cost vs return. And max return is I believe proportional to the number of rooms a house can claim to have.

Ok that explains why they don't build houses with the very useful/essential item of a cellar, even though it would be worth its weight in gold for most people and add minimum cost to the price of the house (at least I believe this is try, perhaps this is a case of citation needed).

So why not build about 2 stores, one fo the first things a lot of people do when getting a house is to turn the loft into an attic room, so there is clearly desire for it. My guess comes down to planning regulations again. That said the new development near us some houses do have 4 floors, but they are mainly flats so...

All this bugs me, because underground is so well insulated that is effectively perfectly insulated - hell if you dug deep enough you'd have as much free heat as you could ever want ;-) So there should be every reason to dig out at least one layer of cellar if not several. As for building higher, well gardens are that small these days, and many are paved/decked over so the reasons for keeping them in sunlight fall down.

So I would say that if the government wants to improve the housing sitation, get them to build cellars and encourage them to build taller houses.