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The HBF voiced concerns to Kate Barkers' review earlier this month that commercial developers could be given "special treatment" to encourage them to undertake more residential development. They don't need much encouragement.

Look at London, the bellwether of the UK property market. In just five large mixed-use schemes, commercial developers have the capability to deliver more than 20,000 homes – that is on a par with the short-term landbank of the country's fifth biggest housebuilder, Bellway Homes. Chelsfield and Crown Estate are among the big names already developing homes in the capital, and a lot more are considering it. They are attacking the housebuilders' market on all fronts, from the intermediate sector in the case of Stanhope's First Base operation to the top of the range in the Crown Estate's homes in Regent Street, which are being touted as potentially some of the most expensive over-the-shop homes in London. And this cross-market assault is being accompanied by fighting talk, commercial developers boasting that they will beat housebuilders at their own game, with homes that are built faster, more cheaply, more efficiently and more innovatively.

Several factors have prompted this sudden interest in residential from the commercial developers. "It is a function of the government's desire to see more mixed use, and because residential values make it good sense," says Andrew Sutherland, director of commercial developer Miller Developments, which does not develop residential itself, but works in joint venture with a range of partners, including sister company Miller Homes.

"Most commercial developers are sniffing around residential," says Yolande Barnes, director of FPDSavills' new mixed-use research unit. "Restrictions on greenfield land have affected commercial developers as much as residential developers. They can't build out-of-town retail centres. Brownfield sites are more urban-based and lend themselves to mixed use, and commercial developers are more used to acquiring urban sites, and better placed to assemble them." The government's desire to see affordable housing integrated into commercial sites has also galvanised commercial developers into action, Barnes adds.

"Housebuilders aren't used to building large schemes, but they've been our bread and butter," says Nick Roberts of Chelsfield, which is working with developer European Land on Paddington Walk, a 153-unit apartment scheme at London's Paddington Basin. "We saw there was a market opportunity here and we wanted to create a mixed-use environment and have control of that. We see there are skills that are transferable [from commercial to residential], and we work with European Land, which has residential skills. It is something we're looking at for mixed-use and regeneration sites."

You can see why housebuilders stuck to houses and developers to offices. Mixed-use is bloody difficult

Yolande Barnes FPDSavills

Paddington Walk includes a number of features that are unusual in residential development (see left) and Roberts believes commercial developers have a different attitude. "Perhaps we bring a more analytical approach. There's a tendency in residential to follow the formula that has worked. We don't have that. We start from quality of design. As design adds value to commercial, so can it to residential, not only internally but also externally. I sense that we have a longer-term commitment that will differentiate us from housebuilders. Paddington has to be a good place to live and work. We have an ongoing commitment to adding value to attract commercial tenants."

Roberts does not expect to be cutting down on build costs at Paddington Walk, but Stanhope believes it can bring efficiencies and cost savings to the housebuilding process and it is aiming to prove it with its First Base operation. First Base is targeting the intermediate market E E in the South-east, the key workers who cannot afford to pay the high prices demanded for new homes around the capital. But in order to bring homes within its £100,000-a-unit target sale price, with no grant or subsidy, it has to reduce construction cost by 20%.

To do that, the company is taking what it believes is a different approach to housebuilding and is innovating in the way land is traded to produce a better product that people will be keen to live in and able to afford. "There are a whole series of things we do in procurement of large buildings that are different to smaller buildings, from pre-planning through to materials procurement," says Elliot Lipton, managing director of First Base.

Off-site manufacturing technology features prominently in First Base's game plan (see below). The company is also exploring different ways of sourcing land, looking at former industrial and employment land now freed up for residential under PPG3, and more radical solutions using a deferred payment mechanism. "There need to be different methods of paying for land, rather than paying it all upfront," says Lipton.

Housebuilders regard First Base's claims with scepticism. "I can't wait to see their first scheme," says Tim Hough, managing director with Miller Homes. Hough says that the answer lies not in residential and commercial developers competing with one another, but with them working together in joint ventures or alliances such as Miller Homes' co-development with Applecross and Miller Developments at Edinburgh Quay in the Lochrin Basin, Fountainbridge, or St George's joint venture with Argent at King's Cross Central – to name but two. "Commercial and residential are different skills. Everyone thinks residential is simple. When I worked in the construction industry, housebuilding was known as cottage bashing. But if you get the layout of residential wrong in a mixed-use city centre scheme, that's 20 end users who are disappointed. Ultimately the design and layout of an apartment have to be sold to people who want to live in it."