From 2002 to 2007 we had The Age Of The Geezer in property. Almost every estate agent and many buyers (whether amateur investors or owner-occupiers) sounded like dodgy car dealers and mentioned potential appreciation, rental yields and flippability before they explained how many bedrooms they wanted and whether they really liked the property. Those days have gone. Now we have The Age Of The Older Owner Occupier, where home ownership seems increasingly confined to those who already own and have enough equity to improve their home or move to another one. It’s fun to see the agents and developers who spoke like Bob Hoskins five years ago now sounding like a Tom Hanks character, warm and fluffy and emphasising the importance of place-making.

The banks… the politicians… the estate agents/surveyors… the homeowners… the developers… who’s to blame for 2008?

The provisional wing of the British property industry believes the downturn was entirely due to Gordon Brown but if you look across Europe, for example, only Poland has escaped recession. Housing markets have suffered badly around the world, in countries with governments of all political persuasions and none. So if I have to play the blame game, it was international bankers who lent too much to too many; now they lend too little to too few.

A supplementary question… do the journalists have to share any of the blame?

Journalists are not to blame but we were too slow to differentiate spin from reality. We were gullible and failed to judge the real demand for UK buy-to-let, the viability of some of the ‘emerging markets’ in locations we had never heard of, and the scale of Spanish over-development. We were spoon-fed public relations nonsense dressed up as estate agents’ ‘research’ to justify yet another development of apartments, and we swallowed it whole.

The market’s had booms and busts before. Was 2008 in any way different? Is it likely to lead to permanent changes in the market? Instead of finding increasingly clever and deceptive ways of lending or borrowing… is it time to reconsider our attitude to renting, at least until wages catch up with house prices?

The current bust certainly seems longer-lasting than others, but it’s too early to assess whether the cycle will return to ‘normal’. What we can already see, however, is the difference being made by public access to information.

Back in 1990 there was no Internet, few property supplements in the press, and less access to databases like the Land Registry’s. So immediately after the 1990 bust we could not easily see if we were repeating the mistakes - now, we have a large reservoir of data and awareness, and it’s hard to see past mistakes being repeated.

As for renting, yes there will be more. Britain is relaxing about the social status of being a renter (it’s not exactly cool to be 25, and owner occupier and in negative equity, is it?). Expansion of the PRS will be through institutional investors and not individuals, so we will have far more Build To Let and not much more Buy To Let.

But we will have clever and (perhaps) deceptive ways of borrowing too - this is inevitable if established lenders do not lend.

Property prices have been hit, but not uniformly across the country and not as badly as many predicted. The market, however, remains extremely sluggish… suggesting the real casualty remains volume. When will it be a good time to be an estate agent again? Is there anything agents could or should be doing to rise above the challenges inherent in the current market?

It’s not quite my job to say how estate agents should change how they work but I think there’s a crude similarity with journalism.

Fewer people are buying papers than before but I’m sure more people are reading more things - online, on Twitter, on blogs. So canny journalists ought to get into those areas, as well as papers.

Likewise fewer people are buying homes but people are still passionately interested in property - so why should estate agents not also operate as house doctors, interior designers, even buying agents? But please, adopt a US-style of customer focus and embrace new technology and social media.

Are there ever days when you wake up and wish you weren’t a property journalist? Has anything you’ve written ever created more controversy than you were comfortable with?

It’s fantastic and an honour to be a property journalist - you write about things people are interested in, so I have never tired of it.

The problem is that too FEW stories court controversy, not too many. Most newspapers and websites prefer lifestyle stories to heavier ones, so the scope for controversy is less. There are scams to be exposed and straightforward untruths about the market to be exposed - it’s a shame more papers are not interested.

I still occasionally rattle cages: would you like to see my 12-page warning letter from Messrs Carter-Ruck?

Is there a single popular misconception about the residential property market that particularly “gets your goat”?

It’s too London-focussed. Because the major estate agents and volume developers are based in London, because they hire London-based PRs to publicise their efforts, and because the largest returns are made from London’s market, the capital becomes the prism through which we are encouraged to see the rest of Britain’s (much larger, more diverse and more interesting) property industry issues.

Thanks, Graham, for your time, it’s appreciated. It’s traditional at the end of a Rat and Mouse interview to finish with an estate agent joke. If you’ve a favourite, please feel free to share. (But it’s not compulsory.)

May I break, or rather twist, tradition and make a topical joke about my own sector of the property business?

Q: How do you make contact with a News International property journalist?

A: Leave a message on your own telephone.

(Only joking, colleagues).

Go here to visit Graham's website, or here to follow him in Twitter.