What a difference a credit crunch makes. Last August, lenders competed to offer giddy salary multiples and 100 per cent mortgages to a nation obsessed with scrambling on to the property bandwagon as prices soared. But over the past 12 months the mortgage market has been jolted back to conditions akin to those of the more restrained 1990s.

Many lenders have been forced out of the market. Those remaining are increasingly wary of would-be borrowers who lack a chunky deposit and a salary to match their aspirations.