GOOD NEWS ON HOUSE PRICES: "London house prices rocket to 20% above pre-crisis peak"

Link to Evening Standard

"London house prices have streaked further ahead of the rest of the country to hit a new record more than 20% above their pre-crisis peak, official figures showed today.

"Prices in the capital grew at an annual pace of 12.3% in December to hit an average £450,000 according to the Office for National Statistics. This was more than double the 5.5% growth seen across the rest of the UK, where prices stand at £217,000 on average.

"... London is one of only three regions in the UK where prices are above their January 2008 peak, standing 20.3% higher than they were before the financial crisis. The South East and East are 1.9% and 1.4% above their pre-recession zenith respectively."

---

Link to web site

Evening Standard:
"Bubble trouble: Danny Dorling's new book on the problem with London's property market"

"Danny Dorling's ... new book, All That Is Solid is the most lucid and urgent account of the UK’s housing crisis you’ll read this year. It deserves a place at the top of Cameron’s reading list. In fact, one would like to hand-deliver it to every minister. It is very hard to read it and retain any confidence in the Government’s housing policies. 'Sometimes it is tempting to suggest that policymakers should simply look at what the current Prime Minister is suggesting and do the opposite,' Dorling notes.

"A professor of geography at Oxford, Dorling has become something of a cult figure in recent years for his publications on population and inequality as well as his incisive TV appearances. However, he established his academic reputation at Sheffield as an obsessive number-cruncher. His ideas are testament to years spent away from the London-centric media, deep in census figures, tracking not only how demographics have changed but how attitudes have shifted too.

"It is hardly news to Londoners that housing is unaffordable for too many of us. It’s perhaps the most anguished of family discussion topics, the rantiest of pub conversations. The average British home now costs five times the average income."