A bit more background on the numbers mentioned in the article and some personal thoughts:

- Non-mortgage sales of houses/flats in the highest price areas in central London (e.g. SW1 / SW3, SWxx plus parts of inner, East and North London) are now more than 80% (that is most likely the cash figures referred to) - people / non-first time buyers are shelling out funds here of almost always more than £1M for small flats - houses from £2M - both up to £30M and more)

- The total number of property sales is about 50%-60% of the volume of pre-2008/9 sales.

Given the broad scale of house prices in London (e.g. £1M - £30M+) and similar high prices in some of the fringe areas (where top price areas also command house prices > £20M), IMHO this only means that there is massive (almost tax-free) inflation-hedging for many that are profiting from the gains of the financial markets in the last years / decades - in other words £1M is the new £100K from e.g 20 years ago.

While the times might have passed when buyers showed up with bags full of cash and could legally buy real estate in the UK / London - no questions asked rendering all global money laundering regulations nil and driving property prices up to previously unseen levels (the commonly used cliché would be a Russian "business-man", but same applies to anywhere where people got hold of truckloads of cash from whatever sources), the UK/London is still a tax heaven for many, particularly European buyers (e.g. Germans because of loopholes in tax legislations / double taxation laws can reduce their taxes massively some close to zero).

Besides the above I believe the following key drivers are visible:

- Central locations in mega-cities like London are getting more and more expensive by the sheer demand (more people than 20 years ago, globalisation) and limited supply.

- Since years in the UK, many, that have made huge profits in financial markets, have exchanged those into tangible assets like property - another indicator for that would be land / country estates with large amounts of land all selling at multiples of years ago. This is not the first time this has happened, in centuries before whole areas in London were built by financial investors / people that have profited from massive financial gains e.g. on the stock exchange. IMHO this also clearly demonstrate that many of those DO very well know they are trading hot air.

- Most of the middle-class children/20s today will be substantially poorer than their parents as they will not be able to participate / gain profits e.g. in housing, but instead will have to pay substantial amounts of their income (if not inheriting a property) for living / housing expenses. One more reason for this is also that huge financial profits today are not shared as broadly as these were e.g. 10 years ago via bonus pays, salaries.

Generally speaking (all the above epitomized) - if you don't have the money to live comfortably in London but have to work for it, London becomes less-and-less attractive now even to middle class people with income levels beyond £150K p.a. - others in services jobs, nurses, teachers, etc are since years not able to live in London anymore - add the changes in living subsidies since April this year when the UK started to "deport" low income families from London to Manchester, Birmingham, the North, the recent Red Cross figures of more than 100 Million people in Europe having no money to buy food and you get a more holistic picture what actually is happening.