How capping bankers’ bonuses could push up London’s house prices

London’s house prices just keep on getting more unaffordable. And if bankers’ bonuses get capped, they could get even further out of reach.

London house prices up again. The latest Land Registry numbers show London prices rose 7% year-on-year, and 2.5% on a month by month basis. I'm never going to get the little Bayswater bolthole I've been dreaming of at this rate.

You can read endless past articles by us on our conviction that the London property market is grossly overpriced, but just because it is overpriced in sterling doesn't mean it can't get more overpriced. Let's not forget that every word Mervyn King utters in his efforts to force down the pound makes the houses we can't afford to buy just that little bit cheaper for anyone buying in a foreign currency. Cut-price safe havens for them; a move further into the suburbs for the rest of us.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.