Vince Cable said that the help-to-buy scheme unveiled in the Budget earlier this year could simply “inflate” the housing market as occurred in the last decade.


From next year, first and second time buyers will be offered government guarantees which should allow them to obtain competitive mortgages even if they have relatively small deposits.


The £130 billion scheme has been heralded as a flagship measure which should help boost the economic recovery while allowing hundreds of thousands of people to meet their aspirations of buying a home.


However, some economists and business leaders have voiced warnings about the scheme and Mr Cable – who previously warned about the dangerous levels of debt before the financial crisis - has now indicated he shares their concerns.


“I am worried about the dangers of getting into another house price bubble,” the senior Liberal Democrat said.

Allsopp, known for property programmes including Location, Location, Location, said young people want to travel, go to university and eat out as well as attempting to buy their first flat.

Suggesting it was difficult to have it all and still get on the housing ladder, she added: “It has never been, and never will, be easy.”


Allsopp told the Observer: “Young people are slightly losing the concept that you make sacrifices to get on the ladder. They want to go to university, they want to travel, they want to eat out frequently and they want to buy their first flat.”


Earlier this year, a survey by Halifax found the UK was becoming a nation of renters, with nearly a third of 20-45 year having no plans to get on the property ladder.


The average deposit for the first-time buyer is now estimated at £26,956, with 35 per cent of those surveyed admitting they will be reliant on a windfall, bonus or an early inheritance to get one together.

Mortgage approvals to home buyers soared to a 16-month high in May in a further sign of a housing market pick-up, high street banks reported.

Some 36,102 mortgages for house purchase worth £5.5 billion were approved during the month, marking an uplift of almost a quarter (24%) compared with May 2012, the British Bankers' Association (BBA) said.

The report predicts that Government efforts to boost mortgage lending will mean more first-time buyers entering the housing market in the coming months, which will help to free some stuck housing chains.

It follows recent figures released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), which said that May was the best month it has seen for mortgage lending since 2008. The CML suggested that the strong recent uplift, which had even taken it by surprise, was partly down to the bad weather seen earlier this year creating a "pent-up" demand.

Surveyors, estate agents and property websites have been reporting confidence returning to the housing market in recent months, with demand from would-be buyers strengthening and house sellers appearing more bullish about sticking close to asking prices.

Residential property prices in the UK were 2.1% higher in the second quarter of 2013 than in the first three months of the year, according to the latest figures published by the Halifax.As a result, house price growth between the latest three months and the preceding three months edged above the 1 to 2% range that it had been in throughout the preceding five months and the biggest increase on this measure since January 2010 when it was 2.9%.

Prices in the three months to June were 3.7% higher than in the same three months a year earlier. This was the biggest increase in this annual measure since August 2010 when it was 4.6%.

On a monthly basis house prices increased by 0.6% in June, the fifth consecutive monthly rise, confirming that house prices continue to rise steadily.

It is becoming increasingly attractive to become a hands off property investor after recent figures suggest the number of portfolio landlords making a loss has risen from 1% to 8%, it is claimed.

Figures from the BDRC Landlord Panel Research report show a big rise in the number of portfolio landlords making a loss and researchers at property investment company Colordarcy believe that many of the pitfalls experienced by landlords can be avoided by investing in fully managed properties with guaranteed rental.

‘Many buy to let investors prefer to do it hands on, however, it is worth remembering that property investing is a business and trying to do everything yourself is actually counter productive in the end, as this recent survey shows,’ said Loxley McKenzie, Colordarcy managing director.

He pointed out that the more time you spend on maintaining properties and dealing with tenant issues, which can happen at any time of the week, day or night, the less time you will have spare to source properties and grow your portfolio.

He believes that hands off property investment has been gaining in popularity because it offers a low risk, low maintenance alternative to traditional buy to let.

‘Hands off should mean just that for investors. That way investors can concentrate on building their portfolio,’ explained McKenzie.

Look back at predictions for the housing market in 2013 and several words appear again and again: "flat", "static" and "treading water" were among the terms favoured by estate agents, lenders and other property market commentators. Most agreed that if there was growth, it would be 2% at most.

But six months on, their forecasts look shaky: Nationwide's June house price index showed that in the first half of the year the average price of a UK home rose by 4%, or more than £1,000 a month, from £162,262 at the end of December to £168,941 at the end of June. Halifax's latest data revealed a near-3% rise in six months from £163,256 to £167,984.

Figures from banks and building societies, meanwhile, show aconsiderable uptick in lending boosted by two government initiatives: Funding for Lending, launched in August 2012 to improve mortgage availability; and the first part of the Help to Buy scheme, offering equity loans on newly built homes, which went live in April. By most measures it seems confidence is returning to the market.

You could argue that a lot of the growth is in London, and you would be right. But it is not just the capital that has seen double-digit rises: Land Registry figures show that in Blaenau Gwent in Wales prices increased by 11.8% between January and May to an average of £80,712. Other areas seeing strong increases included Darlington, where average prices were up by 5.7% in the first five months of the year, and Bridgend, where they rose 3.9%.

Property website, Rightmove’s latest report showed that across England and Wales asking prices were up by 10.4% in the first six months of the year. Photograph: Russell Boyce/REUTERS
Property market experts who as recently as December were predicting flat or even falling house prices this year are rapidly backtracking as evidence mounts that confidence has roared back into the housing market.

Price rises averaging up to 5% across the country are now forecast for the year – and causing consternation among would-be first-time buyers, who already face a struggle to save for a deposit. An increase of that size would add £8,100 by the end of the year to last December's average price of £162,000 recorded by the Land Registry.

Property website Rightmove will next week double its prediction for growth in asking prices this year to 4%, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is poised to push up its forecast from 2% to "the 4% area".

High-end estate agent Knight Frank has reversed its forecast, saying that instead of a 1% fall in 2013 it expects prices could gain 3% by the end of the year.

Malaysia is set to accelerate its already aggressive investment push into UK property in a move that underscores the country’s eagerness to extend its corporate reach beyond Asia.

The country is at the start of an important upswing in its investment into the UK that will turn it into a “major player in the London property market”, according to Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Najib added that the Employees Provident Fund, the largest Malaysian government pension fund by assets, is “flush with cash and needs to take some of the surplus abroad”.

The statement of ambition comes at a time when Malaysia is already outgunning most of its international rivals in terms of investment into UK property. The country spent £1.4bn, almost all of it in London, last year, more than any other Asian state, snapping up City of London offices and the redevelopment site at Battersea power station. Mr Najib is due to preside over a groundbreaking ceremony there today.


“We like London,” said Mr Najib. “We know it well and understand it and you can get a very good yield on London offices.”

The move by its sovereign and pension funds into the London market comes at a time when the Malaysian economy is facing what looks like a perfect economic storm, including the slowdown in the Chinese economy, plunging commodity prices and the looming end of the US’s quantitative easing programme.

Malaysia is a commodity producer that exports to China and has benefited handsomely from the cash that washed through emerging markets as a result of the US Federal Reserve’s aggressive bond-buying programme.

However, Mr Najib played down the likely effects of the threats to growth coming from the world economy and insisted Malaysia remained on course to grow at 5 to 6 per cent annually and achieve the government’s target of joining the ranks of the world’s high-income countries by 2020.