All [almost] Going Swimmingly to Plan Then, Isn't It Mark; Well So Long as We

don't get mired in endless arguments about what "good-quality" and "affordable" really means ..

On Thursday night the housing minister Mark Prisk said: "We're determined to build a bigger and better private rented sector that gives tenants more choice of good-quality homes. This is part of our wider efforts to get Britain building, which also includes transforming the planning system to support growth and delivering 170,000 new affordable homes by 2015."

Buy-to-let fuels house price boom

Britain's buy-to-let mortgage market has surged to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crash, prompting fears that a prolonged period of cheap money is setting off an unsustainable housing boom.
Lending to landlords topped £5bn in the past three months, a period that preceded the Bank of England's pledge this week to keep interest rates low for the next three years. More than one in 10 mortgages are now being handed to a would-be landlord while first-time buyers are still struggling to get on the housing ladder.
About 40,000 buy-to-let mortgages were advanced in the three months to June, up from 33,000 in the first quarter of the year, as landlords cashed in on cheap mortgage deals and investors sought higher returns than they could get from putting their cash in the bank.

David Whittaker, managing director of Mortgages for Business, said: "Demand for rental property remains red-hot. Landlords are refinancing in their droves to raise enough capital to make further additions to their portfolios."

Housebuilders are also reporting a rush to take advantage of government mortgage subsidies for new homes and a top London estate agent said the value of prestige homes in the capital had risen by 18% – adding £500,000 to the price of a central London home in the past year.

Now is there someone prepared to summarise exactly what is going on in a reasonably short sentence ?

Stephen Lewis, chief economist at Monument Securities, said: "The danger is that, when a flood tide of mortgage finance meets a chronic shortage of housing, the result will be an escalation of house prices."

Thank you Stephen - although, not to be picky you understand, I might have had "cheap, subsidised" in front of "mortgage finance".