What do foreigners think about the UK's house prices?
"I visited England a few weeks ago and was astonished at how much prices had risen since my last visit. A phone box call minimum charge had trebled, a coffee and a cake cost nearly 5 pounds. It didn't take me long to discover the reason for the price inflation. House prices in Britain have risen by 250% over the past 7 years. I tried to explain to some gloating relatives that they hadn't really got richer, it was just inflation – after all, you've always got to live somewhere. This so-called “wealth effect” has spread out and driven up prices across the board. I was also interested to learn that the UK monetary authorities are fiddling the inflation statistics to exclude house prices completely. Massaging statistics has been raised to the level of a science in the US, where the CPI figure bears no relation to real world inflation as experienced by the man on the street. They should offer a course on it at MIT – you'd be guaranteed a high-paid job when you came out. By the way, if you are the sort of person who enjoys spending lots of money and getting very little for it Britain is definitely the place to head for, especially London. A holiday in Britain would appeal particularly to the kind of person who likes to hold US dollar denominated assets at this time."
An excerpt taken from Clive Maund's website