The chances of York children owning a house anywhere near their parents has gone.

They can’t compete with a surge of house buyers from down south who have sold average-sized properties for twice the price of a house in York. The migration is all one-way traffic, as people from the north cannot afford to move south.

So now we have the situation where adults born in York are still living with their parents as they approach their thirties, unable to afford the ten percent (up to £30,000) deposit. Only a generation ago this was a mortgage in itself.

These young people in turn may want children, who will then also be living in the house - leading to the kind of overcrowding we saw in Victorian Britain.

It is a problem which is not easy to resolve, but which must be considered.

Perhaps, if a house was sold for £1m in one part of the country and another house, of the same size or bigger, bought for half a million elsewhere, then some of the half million profit could be given to the council of that city?

This would go towards quality subsidised housing for the locals.

One thing is for sure, it is one big unequal playing field at the moment.

Brian McCusker, Hartoft Street, York