This makes the average London house price in 2014 an astounding £458,000; few potential owners make the wages necessary to service that kind of debt.

The London bubble is being fuelled partly by foreign investors and the fact that housing stock is low and the population is growing relentlessly. It inevitably makes the existing property’s valuable increase beyond reason.

Foreign money has been ploughed into property in London’s affluent suburbs, often using houses as something of a reserve currency. The rising prices in London have rubbed off on the UK’s other regions where prices have also steadily risen.

To emphasise the regional disparity, the average three bed house in Chelsea or Kensington sells for £1.8m; the equivalent property in East Ayrshire sells for £72,500.

Jonathan Green of property buying firm Swift Capital ltd said: “We have seen huge regional variations in property prices across the UK, which are undoubtedly being accentuated by the housing bubble in London as prices are rising faster here than anywhere else.

“While the rise in prices is good news for current homeowners, particularly those in London, the longer term impact of this on non-homeowners and on the economy is yet to be seen.”

The average price of a UK home is now £254,000, and in a climate of zero hour contracts and temporary work, this seems permanently unachievable for the younger generation.

It seems bizarre that house prices in London can be 23% higher than before the 2008 banking crisis, and this kind of news promotes the feeling that London has become a separate economic entity. This isn’t good news for London’s economic sustainability; the capital draws talent in for its career opportunities. If there’s nowhere to live surely London’s ‘Ideas Economy’ will have considerably less pull.

Building new affordable houses or introducing rent caps could get the market going again. Too many houses are taken up as buy-to-let opportunities and the bubble’s ‘pressure valve’ is once again released, meaning prices remain temporarily safe.

The rise in prices will be good news for the part of the electorate who already own homes; Britain is a state where home ownership is a key part of our identity and the value of our houses can practically win or lose elections.

Instead of letting house prices subside to more natural levels, the government introduced schemes like ‘Help to Buy’ which propped up the already inflated prices of our housing stock.

The London housing bubble has spread to Greater London and throughout the country, which is useful to the incumbent government, but disheartening to non-homeowners. To some extent the government can pass a housing bubble off as ‘growth’, and they may not be willing to provide coherent answers as quickly as we’d like.

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