Think London Is In A Housing Price Bubble? Check Out Peru

You don't need to ask about London house prices to know they're going up. Londoners will happily tell you, whether you want to hear it or not.

The Office for National Statistics' house price index shows London's prices are up by more than 35% since the start of 2008, an eye-watering figure for anyone in the city trying to get on the housing ladder. House price crash? What house price crash!

But there's a few parts of the world that make London's price growth look a little bit pathetic.

The figures are from a Bank of International Settlements (BIS) paper released earlier this month - economists Kostas Tsatsaronis, Robert Szemere and Michela Scatigna took a look at global house price dynamics. Here are four parts of the world that make London's growth look feeble.

A 35% increase? The residents of Hong Kong, where prices are 61% since the start of 2008, would kill for a 35% increase. It's not just one city either. The same paper suggests Chinese house prices overall have jumped by 64% since the crash. That's despite the country's astonishing ghost cities.

But according to the BIS, the two biggest surges have been in latin America. Brazilian house prices are up by 90% over the same period, and Peruvian house prices are up 121%. That's not a typo.

So Londoners, don't worry too much about house prices. Think about saving for a deposit in Lima, and despair.