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"For 10 years Gordon Brown recklessly allowed banks to engage in ever more unsustainable lending on the back of a bubble in the housing market. He achieved short-term growth at the cost of long-term stability. "

-Vince Cable, Liberal Democrats

"... an increase in house prices does not directly make most households better off - a homeowner can only unlock the capital gain if (s)he is willing to move to a cheaper house ..."

-Bank of England, in written evidence to Treasury Committee

"Now this simply makes the point - again - that houses are not like shares. When share prices rise it means we as a society are richer - our companies are going to be more productive and more profitable than we had previously thought. When house prices rise on the other hand, society is no richer. We have the same houses and the same people to live in them."

-Evan Davis, BBC Economics Editor in a BBC article

"I think everybody thinks they are too high [house prices], unless you have bought one, and that's one of the problems of this present stage."

-John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister, quoted by the BBC

"Relative to average earnings or incomes, or anything else you could look at, house prices do seem remarkably high."

- Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, in the Telegraph

"By 2026 only three out of ten of today's ten year olds will be able to afford to buy a home when they have families of their own if we stick with current building rates."

- From the Government's summary reponse to the Barker Review

"Every year thousands of constituents come to my office to complain they have no hope of getting on the property ladder. Cornwall always comes bottom of every survey of earnings and has the lowest income per head figures, and yet local people face some of the highest prices in the country. It is nothing short of a disaster for local people."

- Andrew George, MP for West Cornwall, in the Guardian

"New buyers now make up less than 25 percent of the market, having been edged out by spiralling house prices and limited supply of appropriate properties. The levels of debt that first-time buyers now have to take on to buy a home is dangerous."

- David Bexon, managing director of smartnewhomes.com, quoted by Reuters

"For many people, housing has become increasingly unaffordable over time. The aspiration for home ownership is as strong as ever, yet the reality is that for many this aspiration will remain unfulfilled unless the trend in real house prices is reduced. This brings potential for an ever widening social and economic divide between those able to access market housing and those kept out. Rising numbers in temporary accommodation is evidence of the polarisation which exists today."

- Kate Barker external member of the Monetary Policy Committee, in the Barker Review Of Housing Supply, March '04

“It is a curse of British life that so many of us perceive a house as a store of value rather than as a place to live. If low income families feel themselves obliged to buy a house as their most plausible source of financial security in old age, this means there is something gravely wrong with the British savings and pensions systems, as well as with the British housing market, which indeed there is.”

- Max Hastings, Chairman of the Campaign to Protect Rural England

"There is an urgent and serious need to help the young. They are the first generation to be leaving college with massive debts, and while housing has always been a challenge, it's become extremely difficult for young people in parts of the country."

- John Tiner, FSA chief executive, quoted in the Guardian, March '06

"It's become increasingly difficult for young people today to buy."

- David Cameron writes in the Independent, March '06

"We've had to survive... in the last year a house price bubble"

- Gordon Brown during BBC TV interview (in video here), Sept '05

"I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the future."

- Gordon Brown in 1997 Budget Speech (BBC coverage here), Apr '97

"With... the continued issue of undersupply of housing in the UK market, the underlying fundamentals [for rises in property prices] are perhaps more positive than the recent swings in sentiment might suggest"

- Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide's Chief Economist, wishing for fewer houses to maintain high HPI on the BBC, Nov '07