There is a period between an offer being accepted on that house or flat of your dreams and the exchange of contracts that is rife with tension. You have no guarantee that your counterparts will not whimsically change their minds, deciding they want more or to spend less (respectively). The purchaser’s solicitor might uncover an unforeseen issue; the surveyor might point to problems with the property. Then there is the hideous practice of gazumping, endemic in 2007 for those who worked in the City of London and lived in the fevered atmosphere of rising prices, and now making a bit of a comeback.

In short, the English system is unsatisfactory in that – until the point of exchange, when 10 per cent of the purchase price is handed over and the seller is legally bound – it relies on the old-fashioned idea that “one’s word is one’s bond”. I wish that were true but all too often the lure of a better deal or just sheer indecisiveness leads people to pull out. And, what’s worse, it’s often after considerable expense has been undertaken on the purchaser’s side.