There is an interesting article on the BBC website right now about the vast numbers of empty properties in the UK - more than 600,000 houses/flats.

At least 200,000 properties have been empty for more than six months. This may be deliberate (they show an apartment block in the City of London where half of the apartments are unoccupied). This is the rich investing their cash and waiting for prices to rise. The article also shows houses for sale for ONE POUND in an abandoned street in Liverpool. If you buy a one-pound house, then you have to "do it up" and make it habitable.

It would be interesting to count all the holiday homes around the country that are only occupied for weekends or the summer season (I have seen whole holiday villages in Cornwall, complete with with a pub, that shut down for many months of the year). So maybe there is no housing shortage at all, it's just that the properties are in the wrong place!

Don't be fooled by the crazy increases in London and SE England prices: in some parts of the UK prices are static or even dropping.

And in rural France prices have been steadily dropping by about 2 - 3% per year because of a glut of property and the dire state of the French economy.