A land laid waste, with all its young men slain, its women weeping and its towns in terror. Things are not as bad as Auden might have depicted them but Wednesday’s 13 per cent fall in Land Securities’ shares suggests investors have realised that the UK commercial property sector’s recent outperformance of the wider market has been somewhat premature. Previous property cycles show that real estate is a late cycle industry – in which both rental and capital values can remain subdued for prolonged periods. After rents peaked in December 1990, for example, Goldman Sachs calculates they did not reach a trough until a full five years later.

Little in Land Securities’ results suggests that it will be any different this time. Recording a £5.2bn net loss and a worse-than-expected 66 per cent fall in net asset value, the UK’s biggest property company poured weedkiller on green shoots. Chief executive Francis Salway, who has sensibly bolstered the group’s balance sheet by raising £756m in a rights issue, trimming the dividend and selling outsourcing arm Trillium, expects conditions to remain “challenging”. Land Securities limited the jump in voids to just 4.6 per cent, up from 3.5 per cent in 2008, but vacancies will rise further as more businesses fail or contract.