As the British housing market sputters, one English village is experiencing a phenomenal housing boom, in which prices have almost doubled in the past two years and are still climbing.

This English village – complete with cul-de-sacs lined with identical two-storey houses, garden gnomes on front lawns and Range Rovers in driveways – is not in the leafy home counties that border London or in a suddenly-trendy seaside setting. It is in Irbil, capital of the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan.