Halifax is estimating growth through the whole of 2016 of between four per cent and six per cent, according to The Guardian. This is slower than the 9.7 per cent annual growth it recorded for the past 12 months, but enough to reduce affordability at a time when average wage growth is only around 2.9 per cent.

It blamed the continued steady gains on an ongoing shortage of supply. This, it says, is in turn caused by a paucity of housebuilding that is also now feeding into fewer secondary sales, as people either fear there will be no suitable house to move to, or cannot afford to upgrade.

But the affordability crisis will, itself, begin to weigh on demand as people are priced out of the market, Halifax adds. This, combined with increasing interest rates, will begin to reduce inflation as the year goes on and is the reason that the annual growth rates will not match those seen in the past few years.

"Price growth could start to cool off with investor appetite dampened by higher stamp duty taxes, issues over affordability and the prospect of interest rate rises," Alex Gosling, chief executive of HouseSimple.com, told the Daily Mail. 

George Osborne said in his Autumn Statement that he will double funding and relax planning laws to ensure the government meets an election pledge of 200,000 new homes a year, and a new pledge of 400,000 affordable homes in the next four years.

He also boosted the demand side of the equation to help buyers meet higher prices, with an extension of the core Help to Buy scheme and the launch of a London-specific branch that offers up to 40 per cent of the value of a home as a government loan.  Prices in the capital are more than double the wider national average.

www.theweek.co.uk