Happy is the man or woman who does not care about house prices. You can hear, echoing across the dinner-party tables of Britain, the angst of first-time buyers facing the prospect of a home costing ten times more than annual earnings by 2026, or current owners’ fears of an impending slowdown.

The cost of bricks and mortar has become such a staple worry of anyone with a modicum of aspiration that it is tempting to imagine that it has always dominated conversation after the weather’s changeability has been exhausted.

In fact, 100 years ago even many middle-class families saw no need to own the roof over their heads. Renting was not just for the huddled masses. It was for much of respectable society, too.

On the eve of the First World War, home ownership in Britain stood at only 10 per cent. With council housing emerging in only the most progressive boroughs, private landlords provided for the overwhelming majority of the remainder, regardless of class.

In areas where supply kept pace with demand, rent hardly went up at all during the Edwardian period – a time when property prices crashed by as much as 40 per cent. In London, an average middle-class family would typically spend between 5 and 15 per cent of its annual income on rent. This gave them far more disposable income than their modern counterparts enjoy today.

But fashion and economics change. Wartime rent controls, introduced in 1915, further dented the “to let” market, and continued to do so even after they were relaxed for more expensive properties. For the rest, renting became increasingly associated with a crumbling housing stock whose owners – facing low returns – no longer had incentive to invest and improve. Many landlords opted to sell the properties either to sitting tenants or to property companies.

At the same time, low interest rates and falling building costs fuelled an inter-war housing boom that vastly expanded the quantity of new middle-class, family-sized properties. Half of all the houses built between the wars went straight to owner-occupiers.

What was more, building societies got into the habit of lending up to 95 per cent of the property’s value over a 30-year repayment schedule. There were half a million borrowers in England and Wales in 1928 and 1.4 million by 1939. By then, home ownership had risen to almost a third of houses. This represented a critical mass among the middle classes. Not owning suddenly looked a bit “below stairs”.

This new snobbery was financially shrewd. Since 1945, house price inflation has been the single biggest source of the increasing wealth of the middle classes. How otherwise would it have become our national obsession?

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