Rics defends report calling for house price controls

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) has been defending its call for the Bank of England to use its powers to limit house price increases to 5% a year.

Speaking to BBC News, Rics senior economist Joshua Miller said different loan-to-value caps could be applied in different regions and gave South Korea as an example of a country which already did so.

"We're not saying that there actually is a housing bubble now, we're saying: 'How shall we manage the risk of a housing boom in the future?' Because we know from the past that housing booms are driven by debt not just by cash buyers."

"People can still buy and sell their houses for whatever they want. Just like with inflation targeting, we're saying [the government] should choose a national index, set an explicit policy threshold, and then act on the basis of that threshold."