UK recklessly addicted to property price gains

It is hard to imagine, much less find, a better exemplar of how capital gets mis-allocated in a bubble than British property agent Foxtons, whose stock was publicly listed this month.

London-based Foxtons, which only three short years ago was taken over by its lenders, went public on Friday and by the end of its first trading day was worth $1.2bn (€0.8bn)

That’s a bit more than double what it sold for in 2007, just before the crash, when its founder Jon Hunt sold out to private equity firm BC Partners in a deal which was at the time widely derided as marking a market top.