The issues voters traditionally care about at British elections are the classic, evergreen political problems. How to stabilise the economy, asylum and immigration, the state of the NHS, and what to do about schools were all top issues ahead of the 2015 general election.



But ahead of this Thursday's London mayoral election, one subject is dominating voters' thoughts: housing. Or, more specifically, the lack of it.

A ComRes poll commissioned by BBC London in April found that 56% of voters in the capital considered housing to be in the top two or three issues facing the city. The second-most-cited issue was immigration on 38%, followed by "security against terrorism" on 26%.

The two leading candidates in the race for City Hall, the Conservatives' Zac Goldsmith and Labour's Sadiq Khan, have both dedicated a good deal of airtime to their ideas on how to solve what many see as a housing crisis.



But how bad is London's housing problem really?

In short, it's pretty bad. That same ComRes poll found that 80% of Londoners considered £300,000 or less to be an affordable price for a two-bed house.

But you'd struggle to find a one-bed flat for that: The actual average asking price for a home in London in March was £534,000, 13.9% higher than it was 12 months earlier, according to the Land Registry and 2.5 times the national average.

At current rates of growth, a single person working full-time would have to save for 29 years to afford a home in London, according to housing charity Shelter.



In January this year, 623 London homes were sold for more than £1 million, a 2% increase on January 2015. Many of those were snapped up not by owner-occupiers but long-term domestic and overseas investors who see high-end homes in London as the safest of bets.

Meanwhile, the average monthly rent in the capital was £1,536 in March, more than double the average figure across rest of the UK and 7.7% higher than in March 2015.

The result is more people leaving London – 5,000 more thirtysomethings permanently left in 2013-4, compared to 2011-12 – and business leaders are worried about the consequences of this.

So what is the solution?

On the big issue – how many more homes should be built? – there is some consensus: Both Khan and Goldsmith are pledging to build 50,000 new homes a year, as is the Liberal Democrat candidate, Caroline Pidgeon. That would be more than double the amount built each year under the current mayor, Boris Johnson.

Building on green belt land remains taboo and none of the main mayoral candidates are suggesting it, preferring to focus on brownfield land, which is often in public hands to begin with.

So, what exactly would the candidates do about housing?