i did mean on average. Actually my brother regrets not having bought a lovely fat for himself rather than for a friend on the edge of hampstead back in the early nineties it was a short walk to the on to the heath. back then it was seriously run down area. Now who knows!

one thing i suspect will happen is that a lot of people will be carrying negative equity, and for a lot of people that means hundreds of thousands of pounds. i suspect we will see a lot of people opting to go bankrupt to get out from under their negative equity, or otherwise they face 15-20 odd years waiting for house prices to end up back in the positive. i sure banks will scream at politicians to remove bankruptcy options since it will cost them so much to write off the debt, but frankly they wont have a leg to stand on since they were bailed out so much themselves.

the reality is that its better for the economy if we all take the bankruptcy hit and then people start amazing wealth again. However what this country will do without the banking sector and north sea oil is another question. possibly start encouraging our best and brightest to actually produce real research and development rather than just work in the city?