Every January the property industry performs the same annual ritual. Estate agents return from the holidays with renewed optimism, newspapers begin publishing predictions for “the year ahead”, and buyers convince themselves that this might finally be the moment value appears.

The property market that finally slowed down.

Britain, that curious island whose inhabitants have long confused the price of a semi-detached house in Ealing with the very meaning of life, continues its perennial obsession with the trajectory of residential property.