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?