In July last year readers of this column may have wondered why we were writing then about CDOs and warning that cheap credit was under pinning house prices rather than market fundamentals. After all most agents were still encouraging clients to put big ticket prices on their properties and TV schedules were still stuffed with property related hyperbole. Turns out the ride has proved to be rather worse than the “bumpy” scenario we had considered. The market is so depressed that we now have more time to carry out esoteric research! One particularly good read is “Phantastic objects and the financial market’s sense of reality” – available as a free download from University College London. This is a psychoanalytical view of the stages of market behaviour. Hopefully, once we have worked through the stages of “panic” and the ensuing “blame” and “vengeance” we will get back to a collective frame of mind where a house is considered as a home rather than a speculative investment.