Berkeley Group boss Tony Pidgley has called the bottom of the market.

Pidgley, who made a fortune and his reputation for calling the 1990s housing crash correctly, told The Independent on Sunday: 'We all accept that, give or take 5%, the market is somewhere along the bottom [of its economic cycle].'

The chief executive at Berkeley Group, one of the few cash-rich house builders, added that there would be between 35,000 and 50,000 construction starts on new homes in 2009. He said 40,000 was most likely, meaning government ambitions to complete up to 240,000 new homes a year would not be fulfilled.

Independent on Sunday

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