House prices still soaring

The Evening Standard today reports how London house prices are continuing to soar despite the national slowdown; further widening the gap between the Capital and the rest of the country.

In Wandsworth, prices climbed 20% last year with the average price in the whole borough at £394,000 (remember, in Putney the average price is just shy of half a million), though price-rises have slowed-up this month.

I appreciate, as someone who has a mortgage myself that this is one of those issues where homeowners generally welcome price rises, but for those not on the housing ladder they're a massive - and growing - problem. I don't want to see a down-turn in prices - that will have major consequences in terms of negative-equity for anyone with a mortgage, and we don't want to return to the boom-and-bust days of the last Tory government when tens of thousands lost their homes.

The local housing market is affected by more than just lack of supply and excess demand. The impact of the ultra-rich at the top end of the market in Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster has caused major ripples through next-door boroughs like ours. The rapid demographic changes Wandsworth has experienced in little over 30 years have also worsened the housing problems, as life-long Putney families have been forced out of the area, unable to move to more appropriate accommodation anywhere close to home. And, as I noted before, the Council's aggressive selling-off of half their housing stock has been catastrophic for social mobility in Wandsworth.

The answer remains the same: a massive shift in local house-building priorities away from top-end riverside penthouses and towards affordable homes to rent and buy. Because Wandsworth remains a popular place to live we're likely to avoid a marked downturn in house prices - which is important; but that only places a greater urgency for more affordable housing.

And that's an urgency Putney's Conservative MP and councillors have proven they simply don't have.

Click here for a larger image of the property map in today's Evening Standard.