Everyone in the world seems to know just how ludicrously expensive London's property market is — but it's still quite shocking to see it visualised. London, a city that takes up less than a 100th of the UK's land area and less than a fifth of its population, seems to swell to a colossal size when you're looking at the property market — completely dominating the rest of the country. How the UK normally looks is on the left, and on the right is how it looks when it's re-scaled based on the value of total housing sales last year. The fantastic maps come from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as part of their "Transforming World Atlas." Every part of the country outside of the south east, east and London shrinks — the north, midlands and south west are noticeably thinner and more squashed. Some individual London boroughs swell up to a similar size as the West Midlands or North East of England. As BAML's note says, "London accounted for 26% of all English housing sales despite accounting for just a fraction (1%) of the total land area." Here's a closer look at the second map: BAML adds that the value of London housing stock rose more than doubled between 2004 and 2014, even despite the impact of the financial crisis and subsequent recession. Across the UK as a whole, prices rose by 57%.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 mind-blowing facts about Greece's economy
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