Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | UK News :: 2015 housing recovery predicted

Improvements to the major banks' balance sheets should lead to them loosening their strict lending criteria, enabling more people to buy a home.

The previous upturn in the housing market was caused by a mismatch between supply and demand, but the recovery petered out as economic uncertainty caused potential buyers to sit on their hands, while those who wanted to press ahead with a purchase continued to face problems raising the mortgage finance they needed.

But CEBR said with just 130,000 new homes built in 2010, around half the level needed to keep pace with the growing number of households, prices should increase by 16% between 2011 and 2015, the equivalent of a gain of around 4% a year.

The recovery will be more marked in London, with demand from international buyers, as the pound remains weak, set to push up the cost of housing in the capital by around 2% a year more than across the UK as a whole.

I think I may have mentioned the local manor house - not a huge country house, but more than 4 beds - is being rented for £2k pcm.

At the other extreme the top line London properties go for around £1-3m for a penthouse flat in a des area, to £3-5m for a family house somewhere on the outskirts, two or three times that closer in, and £20-40m for a premium property near the centre.

There are rumours the flats in Hyde Park One - supposedly the most expensive tower block in London - sold for around £70m.

An estate near me with four substantial houses and a fair amount of land sold for around £6m recently.

Typical "successful middle class" homes - lawyers, business owners, small-scale entrepreneurs, minion-class board members, thieves and gangsters - are consistently between £1-2m in most of the UK, and maybe double that around the London green belts.

I have no idea how these prices compare to the rest of the EU.

As for Leyton being "cheap", it has always been true that you can always tell Londoners as they (mostly) live outside the M25. London is full of people who weren't born there and are on their way somewhere else (better probably).

Anybody who wants to won a house with garden cannot possibly afford london anymore, so they leave.

As this letter in the Independent explained today (I didn't write it);-

Once upon a time, not too long ago, a single bread-winner could go out and earn sufficient money to both feed a typical family and pay a reasonable mortgage. Nowadays two bread-winners are struggling to earn sufficient to be able to save for a deposit ("Britain to become a nation of renters", 31 May).

Obviously something has gone badly wrong; either rates of pay are far too low or house prices are far too high. The only two solutions seem to be to raise wages or to build a lot more council houses to reduce house prices.

Incidentally, if the principle of "right to buy" is such a good principle, why isn't it extended to the private rented sector?

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