It's not a thing that's unique to the UK, over this end of the pond, in the biggest city here, our delightful council have artificially increased the value of houses, to grasp more rates from us. Not unusual for someone's council valuation to have increased 100k or 5 times that in a year. Average house price in my city is 750k at the lower end of the scale, anyone buying in a reasonable area is probably looking around 1 mill plus, unless you want to live in a gang infested area of town, even those are still around 300k +. Being heavily driven my influx of imports pumping up the market, and borrowing overseas to buy property here, and only paying 1%, unlike your poor Kiwi here at Kiwi bank rates. You go to an auction and 9 times out of 10, you will be beaten...... Unfortunately successive governments here have encouraged it, we do need more population here, but the right sort that pump money back into the economy, not send it straight back off shore.