Senior Conservatives have urged the prime minister to build four million homes on green belt land, arguing it could raise almost £1tn for the Treasury.
A paper published by the Adam Smith Institute, the free-market think tank, calls for the use of compulsory purchase orders to buy green belt land in metropolitan areas.
Shares issued to landowners, local residents, councils and central government could then be traded on the stock market.
The institute said developing this land would increase the value of shares by a factor of 15, enabling the construction of 3.8m new homes and raising £938bn for the public purse in the next 15 years.
