<p>One doesn’t like to appear too smug but there is always a certain element of satisfaction in being proved right – even if the news is bad. It’s now almost four years since your correspondent got The Telegraph to warn that the then House Builders Federation really ought to be renamed the Flat Builders Federation due to the massive shift in production in just a few very short years. Given that the guts of our industry’s lobbying over the course of the past seven years has been to bang on endlessly that undersupply is the root cause of house price inflation, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that oversupply might deliver the opposite. And it has. An analysis of Land Registry figures by the Financial Times has found that whilst the average property prices have risen 31% since September 2003, new flats have fallen by 0.9% over the same period. </p> <p>Is this a policy disaster? Erm, it’s a bit difficult to argue otherwise. It seems unbelievable that it’s taken almost four years for the government to admit that the warnings we made were, in fact, valid. Not one to delay effective executive action for a moment, Yvette Cooper is …