So the PM Pledges £2bn to Fix ‘Broken Housing Market’

Really? We shall see.  The way I see it, British house prices will at best keep up with inflation this year and next, with no rises expected at all this year in London, and the so-called silver economy appears to be the driving force behind growth in the UK housing market, with those aged 66 and over the only age group to see an increase in the number of property exchanges over the past quarter.

By comparison, the number of home movers in all other age brackets has fallen over the past three months, with those in the 18-25 and 26-35 age groups seeing the biggest drops.  The data underscores the difficulties faced by young people wanting to get onto the property ladder. House prices are so inflated, particularly in London, that the royal Bank of Mum and Dad now helps fund 26pc of all property transactions in the UK, providing deposits for more than 298,000 mortgages in 2016.

That means the Bank of Mum and Dad has become the equivalent of the ninth-biggest mortgage lender in the UK, making it bigger than Clydesdale Bank in the mortgage market.  This is not a problem of individual profligacy for this generation but unprecedented historical rises in the cost of housing, and our PM’s solution – an extension on help-to-buy! Let’s throw more debt at a problem.

On a positive note and one I am always happy about – Our latest figures at Lock & Key show people are beginning to experience ‘Brexit fatigue’ they are bored of it all and are getting on with their lives, and we are seeing net volume transactions up across the board from last year.