A rush by home-buyers to beat an end-of-June deadline for a tax break and a shortage of properties on the market helped to push a measure of British house prices to its highest level since 1988 in May, a survey showed on Thursday. In the latest sign of the heat in the housing market, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ price index - which reflects the proportion of surveyors reporting price increases - rose for a fourth month to +83 from +76 in April. “With the economy performing better than could have been expected even a short while ago and the cost of money still at rock bottom levels, the principal ... (full story)