Borough Comes Third in London House Price League Table

5.31.10pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 10th May 2004

A leading house price analyst - Your Mortgage magazine - puts Richmond borough third in terms of London house prices, with a average price of £376,000). On average prices are almost twice those of Hounslow (£194,000) and approaching three times the cheapest borough (Barking - £193,000). The magazine forecasts however a further rise of 23% in the next four years, the highest in London, taking the borough to the second most expensive in the capital.

Vincent Cable, MP, who had an article published in the Financial Times this week on the explosion in housing prices and household debt, said that: "forecasting house prices is a mug's game but we have to take seriously the prediction of serious bodies like the International Monetary Fund who say that the market is seriously overvalued and could fall sharply by 30% or so in the next couple of years. If that were to happen, a lot of young families who have borrowed to the hilt in order to get onto the housing ladder will find themselves with negative equity. I have been appealing to the Chancellor for some time to take more seriously the dangers of a bursting housing bubble and to seek to moderate the extraordinary growth in bank lending, much of it frankly irresponsible and based on the assumption that favourable economic conditions will continue indefinitely".

"The local position is such that families with moderate means and middle incomes - doctors, scientists, teachers - cannot remotely contemplate the kind of mortgage necessary to buy, let alone manual workers".