Accounting for 9% of England’s housing stock, bungalows are the go-to answer for today’s politician when questioned on what to do for older home-movers. Their answer is typically accompanied by an anecdote involving an elderly relative.

It is true that bungalows offer single-floor living with plenty of storage space and access to outside space but arguments in favour of them tend to miss some simple but important points. They are grossly inefficient in terms of land use and the values they achieve reflect the underlying development value of the land rather than the bungalow. Therefore it is unlikely that people would pay the same price for a new build bungalow where there is no prospect of development.

So rather than building traditional bungalows, we can learn important lessons from them. The importance of space, storage, and access to outside space all emerge from their popularity.

One solution is to effectively build ‘bungalows’ stacked on top of each other. In other words, new build flats with all the attractions of a bungalow but without the stress of an overly large garden.