Everywhere else you look, extraordinary, temporary measures look like becoming standards on which the house price recovery’s being built. A bank base rate of 0.5%? Fine. It would still be historically extremely low at, say 3.5%, but many believe it would cripple the property market. A banking sector functioning off the back of £185bn Special Liquidity Scheme, a £134bn Credit Guarantee Scheme, £200bn of quantitative easing, with lending targets written into law? Okay, but what happens when the banks return, cap-in-hand, warning of a 2011 mortgage famine? The different between 2010/2011 and 2008/2009 is that one is immediately after an election, rather than before. The will to save the property market at the cost of the country’s finances might not be there as we head into next year.

Our publisher looks at some fundamentals and winces, in his guest column for Citywire.

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