WHERE Gordon Brown leads, Leonardo DiCaprio follows. So we might conclude from news this week that the Hollywood actor is to produce a 13-part series on the building of an eco-town. The American Midwest may not seem fertile ground for the venture, but Greensburg, Kansas, was wiped almost off the map by a tornado in May. Discovery, which is replacing its Home channel with one called Planet Green, plans to give the town of 1,500 residents “a sustainable model of eco-living . . . that will save it from future environmental catastrophe”.

Brown is no less fired up on the subject of housing. To avert a different form of disaster – a flood of rage from those priced out of home ownership – Brown has his advisers sifting through reports, papers and policies to find the right mix to bring reasonably priced housing within reach. Part of the challenge is locating the land and then securing permission to build, which is no simple process, as our story on page 27 shows. This week’s reports of a new regime of regional development agencies may help, once the inevitable dust has settled.

Our own environmental commitments – such as all new homes being zero-carbon by 2016 – will further complicate the goal of speeding up construction. So will the demonstrably dire quality of some of the property built in the 1960s, when we were last obliged to build at such pace. In a resource-conscious future, we must learn how to get it right first time.

Examples of how to do this, inexpensively, at high density and on brownfield land, do exist, as shown by the Housing Design Awards announced yesterday. Winners this year include the London developments Tachbrook Triangle, a high-tech Barratt scheme that incorporated an endangered Georgian terrace in Pimlico, and Melody Lane, light-filled copper-clad terraced homes on the site of a former garage in Islington. In Plymouth, Gun Wharf is the turreted redevelopment of a 1950s council estate and Broadclose, in Bude, Cornwall, is a large-scale predominantly affordable development with a “nod to the Cornish vernacular”.

BACKGROUND

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• Which economists will win the contest to be the gloomiest over the future for prices?

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• Opening bids - a year in property

BACKGROUND

• Opening bids: Why the Government must do something about Britain’s empty properties

• Will there be a rate cut before Christmas? Kate Barker knows - but she’s not telling

• Downturn and downtown in 2008: how investors in UK city-centre flats may feel the chill first

• Opening bids

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BACKGROUND

• Comment: The housing shortage

• Ripple effect from Belgravia to the suburbs

• Comment: the property market slowdown

• Tax perks for a few are adding to the property have-nots’ sense of injustice, but don’t expect reform any time soon

• This was not a timely retreat. What does the government now mean to do to save the planet?

The silencing of our Mr Spocks

Our public administration has specialised in low-level, chronic inefficiency with a counterpoint of big talk

BACKGROUND

• Average prices in the South are 1.59 times higher than the North

• The City’s ardour for status homes remains unabated

• The dawn of a more eco-conscious Britain may be delayed

• It's bonus time, let the stampede begin

• Prices and politics either side of the border

Hips will make us greener, or so the Government says

• Hips have already won hearts and minds and will make us all greener, or so the Government says

BACKGROUND

• Mortgage competition makes millions immune to base-rate moves

• Hidden costs of a place in the sun

• Primark Principle revises gloomy views

• Going green is not cheap

No one is suffering as much as first-time buyers

Lenders are getting more picky, yet property prices are refusing to fall far enough, fast enough

These are all developments that you might just be able to live in, or next door to. Even the overall winner, Berkeley’s Tabard Square in Borough, has made up for its vast height and high density by pouring money into common areas. It has established the largest new square built in London since 1948.

You can see pictures of the award winners at timesonline.co.uk/newhomes. What all share is hours, weeks and even years of careful contemplation and consultation on how best to use the site and serve local people. The importance of that process, which wouldn’t make for great television even if Leonardo was involved, and Mr Brown’s stated commitment to it, is why the Prime Minister’s promised three million new homes will take until 2020 to materialise.

LOAN YOUR HOME

Saddled with a giant mortgage and worried about costs that are not so much rising as rampaging? Why not let your property? This is one option, at least, for those struggling to bring their household budget under control after five interest rate increases in a year. As we report on pages 6-7, wise householders are making action plans now, rather than pining for better news later, mindful that most observers are tipping at least another quarter-point increase in rates before we can hope for any let-up.

In one case, a family has surrendered one floor of their seven-bedroom Victorian house to create a money-making apartment. As Naomi Cleaver shows, such a decision need not mean any sacrifice in lifestyle or living space.

But those willing to move out entirely – at least for a time – might discover strong demand for their home from tenants. Agents trading in Central London are crying out for more stock, as foreign buyers snap up homes that they can afford to keep off the market, whether they use them or not.

Demand for family-sized country homes is also springing to life. Humberts now estimates that 65 per cent of aspiring renters are a new class of local families who have sold up elsewhere yet failed to find another home worth buying. The shortage of quality stock is leading to bidding wars, albeit more genteel than those of Central London. Rents have risen by as much as 12 per cent in the South East, and by 8 per cent in the Cotswolds, after increases lagging at roughly the level of inflation last year.

This new demand might mean an opportunity for buy-to-let investors, whose activities have been concentrated in cheaper, urban locations. Savills characterised the tone of the market as “full of dissatisfied householders wanting bigger, better homes”. If demand continues to boost rental prices, returns on big, expensive homes might start to outstrip those traditionally achieved by flats.

For those families willing to downsize for a time, it might prove a money-spinner to get them through the worst of their mortgage woes. judith.heywood@thetimes.co.uk

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