The estate agents' photographs have picked up the rather desolate atmosphere of the flat, which has put many people off even viewing; those who have been enticed through the door "have been unable to visualise themselves living there", says Hannah Bentley, from estate agents Douglas and Gordon, "particularly in the bedroom, which has no bed."

Okay, call me intolerant, but in my book if you haven't consciously grasped the fact you're buying a building, and into that building you'll be putting your stuff, then you've really no business buying a property in the first place, and you deserve to live in a Transit van. And yet - according to the Telegraph - people are queueing for the services of HomeStagers, who, for a small fortune, will show you how to put the right stuff into your flat so that a prospective purchaser will temporarily go giddy with all the aspirational lifestyle crap around them and believe - for long enough to make an offer - that they're getting the whole package... gadgets, gundog and trophy wife out of a magazine, too. Interesting. Incidentally, if you own a property in Pimlico there's another reason to read the Telegraph piece... it's not the first message the Rat and Mouse has received telling us that the Pimlico market's hot and getting hotter right now.