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  Monday 27th December 2004  World News   Powered by Yeast Logic
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Asian tsunami catastrophe: UK house prices unaffected

Relief for millions as Britain rides out the storm
by our housing disaster rapid response team

City analysts have expressed cautious optimism that the terrible tsunamic catastrophe which engulfed a number of Asian countries over the weekend will not have a devastating knock-on effect on the UK's wobbling house prices.

One man in a smart suit and tie — who bought a small terrace house in Hackney in 1982 for three-and-sixpence and is now sitting on a £4.2m goldmine — told The Rockall Times: "As the first reports started to flood in it looked for a while as if the disaster might knock back prices in the south of England by as much as 0.073 per cent, bring the average price of a one-bed flat in the Home Counties to a three-year low of £765,000. Mercifully, the market rode out the storm and we are able to report no casualties among those who were planning to regale relatives with dinner-party anecdotes about exactly how much their bricks-and-mortar have risen in value since Christmas Eve."

One visibly-relieved Basingstoke hostess said: "It's been a rollercoaster couple of days, I can tell you. We've had a terrible six months what with worries about further rises in the Bank of England base rate and then came this Boxing Day body-blow. I'm a bag of nerves but I can tell you that I had the estate agents in the other day and they confirmed that our three-bed semi had risen in value by 1.2 per cent during December. Thank God we've survived this nightmare."

The outlook is not quite as rosy for homeowners in other parts of the world, however. House prices in parts of India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Sumatra fell by 100 per cent over the weekend, with beachfront property particularly badly hit by the sudden slump. Lots and lots of foreigners perished in the aftermath of a submarine earthquake measuring 98.8 on the breathless newsworthiness scale. Mercifully, only four of these are reportedly British, and Her Imperial Majestyness Liz II's embassy in Bangkok is hopeful that a party of UK paedophiles enjoying a winter break in the sun-kissed holiday paradise of Phuket has survived without injury.

Previously

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