It is summer: time for lazing around, letting your mind wander and, of course, devising a stupid solution to Britain’s plunging house prices.

It all looks bleak on the housing front. The latest figures from the Nationwide Building Society suggest prices in July are already 9 per cent lower than their October peak. With mortgage lenders unable to gain access to wholesale funding, cheap finance is a thing of the past and sensible buyers are pulling out of deals. So house prices have further to fall.