This is the BBC.

In this edition of the bottom line, we'll be exploring the market for land,

how it works and how it sometimes doesn't work.

Hello and welcome to the programme, and today we're going to examine one of the most important pieces of the economy,

but one which is often overlooked.

Land. Now, people talk a lot about housing. We have some obvious problems with the housing market.

I'll summarise three of those. There isn't enough housing, making it very expensive.

Much of what has been constructed is often unsuitable for the needs of ordinary people.

Too many luxury flats for foreign investors in London, for example.

And we have dereliction in parts of the country too.

Pretty well everyone thinks the housing market is full of problems.

But the premise of this programme is that for the market in any kind of building to work, we need to understand

how the market for the land underneath the building works.

Who decides what land is for?

Because it's that which determines what is built on the land afterwards.

Well, we would love to have had with us one of the big property developers, but tellingly,

none of them wanted to talk about it.

But we're not going to let

that stop us talking about how this market works or fails to work. Fortunately, I have three guests

who know the ins and outs of it all. Let's take a few minutes to meet them. First is Geeta Nanda,

who's the chief executive of Thames Valley Housing Association. Now, just give us how a housing association works

because you're allocating properties to people on the basis of some kind of need.

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