How bad can it get? Nationwide’s August figures showed house prices down almost 2 per cent since July, producing the UK’s first double-digit, year-on-year decline since 1992. The annualised quarter-on-quarter rate of decline, meanwhile, is touching 17 per cent. It is now likely that the eventual peak-to-trough fall will end up being more severe – in real and nominal terms – than the corrections of the early 1990s and mid-1970s.

Prices are already 11.5 per cent down from last October’s high in nominal terms. This sudden collapse reflects, in order of significance, ludicrous earlier valuations, a shift in buyer psychology, and credit withdrawal by lenders. Economists forecasting 30 per cent-plus peak-to-trough nominal falls, once ridiculed as attention-seeking outliers, are now two-a-penny.