In 2060 houses will be luxurious cupboards with combined showers and toilets, but only kings of small oil states will be able to afford to buy one. At least they will if the trend for the last 50 years continues.

Research from the Halifax shows that in the last half-century our homes have quadrupled in price and shrunk but are a lot nicer than they used to be. We even have indoor toilets and other such untold riches.

In 1959, an average house cost £2,507; which is £43,713 in today's money. Nowadays that might buy you a shed on the less-popular side of Orkney, but not somewhere with running water.

Now the same house will set you back more than £162,000; and at this rate in another five decades it will be £650,000, in today's prices.

We will also all be sleeping alone as the singleton becomes the basic unit of society – which will be a blessing since our micro-flats will not have enough air in them for two people to breathe at once. If you have friends around, you will have to take turns inhaling like scuba divers with a dodgy air tank.

There are already micro-flats around. Most are populated by sad students wishing they were in a shared house with crumbling walls and violent neighbours, rather than having to convert their camp bed into the only seat in the monoroom, and put their heads out of the mini-window in order to mini-stand up. But we will be seeing more and more of them in city centres, according to experts.

You can expect beds folding out of walls, single booths containing shower and toilet, and choking humidity in the summer. In America, estate agents call them "efficiencies" which is slightly sinister marketing-speak for 'painfully small'.

According to British archiect Richard Horden, an expert in micro-homes, if you want to get the feel for the future of urban living, spend a few hours in an easyJet seat. "Airlines do compact spaces very well - everything is carefully designed and scaled. It's about calmness, indirect lighting and neutral colours," he says.

They also induce deep-vein thrombosis.