Record levels show that 2011 housing market was best yet

Bugle Says

With the news that property values in Hammersmith & Fulham went UP by 6.3 per cent this year (figures go up to August), the sound of champagne corks could be heard popping in estate agetns up and down the Shepherds Bush Road.

London as a whole is the only region in the country where house prices have increased in the past year, making current prices now near the record levels of January 2008 - data from the House Price Index shows the average property value increased to £348, 686; and with the increase in Hammersmith exactly three times the London average, you'd be lucky to find much at that price round here.

Our neighbours, Kensington & Chelsea, are the only borough to outperform us - and we reckon that those figures are skewed by the news that Michael Winner is selling his house for a cool £60million. At more than a million pounds per room, the 47-room mansion is going to upset a few averages...

You Say

Is this proof positive, as it were, that the lunatics have not just taken over the asylum but are busy furnishing it and adding a loft conversion?

On the one hand we have depressing unemployment, inflation scares and an unholy deficit mess left us by the last government - on the other, we have this news. Maybe it's foreign investors: sharks scenting the blood of a British depression...