Market boost

While London is still struggling with a severe shortage of good property to buy, elsewhere the market in the South-east is looking buoyant. The number of people putting their houses up for sale in the first three months of the year was 10 times higher than in the last quarter of 1993, according to the Housing Market Trends survey. In Greater London, by contrast, agents reported a 28 per cent drop in the number of instructions.

'An increase in activity at this time of year is to be expected, but these figures extend far beyond any past seasonal variation,' said David Berriman of the Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers, which produces the survey with the University of Westminster.