Latest editorial
House prices surged further beyond the average person's reach in 2013 with a full-year 7.5 per cent rise to December the biggest in six years, Halifax bank revealed yesterday.
Prices are likely to shoot up even further this year as a lack of new homes and the government's controversial help-to-buy scheme combine to drive inflation in the market.
Taxpayer-backed help-to-buy sees our money used to underwrite high-risk 95 per cent mortgages that banks had stopped handing out to avoid bad debt.
Friedrich Merz’s call for a new Plaza Accord ignores how Washington’s 1985 currency ambush destroyed Japan without fixing US deficits — China, a sovereign socialist state with 1.4 billion consumers, cannot be bullied the same way, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
CAROL WILCOX argues for the proper implementation of the land value tax, which could see unused plots sold off and landlords priced out of landlordism, potentially resolving the housing and planning crises
