So we are destined for a stonking great crash in the housing market, are we? Or is this just another conspiracy theory spun by kill-joy pointy-heads too short-sighted and too grumpy to understand the one law of gravity Newton evidently missed: “What goes up like house prices, must go up lots more.”

Clever clogs may well rub their chins and mutter gravely about the collapse of the early 1990s. What they forget to say — or, more likely, will not know — is that the unluckiest Mr Average of Acacia Avenue would have lost the decidedly un-princely sum of £8,735, or a mere 12 per cent — and only if he or she got his or her timing precisely wrong, by buying at the very top and selling at the very bottom. Doctors of doom might also forget that the average UK house, valued at £69,850 at the height of the 1989 boom, is valued at £198,898 now. That should send even the most pessimistic persons to the property advertisements or out to a viewing this morning.

There are no guarantees. Yes, it would be unwise to expect to own furniture, go to the cinema, eat any more than two bread-and-water meals a day and keep the bailiffs off your doorstep. But as long as you don't lose your job, get divorced, go mad (or borrow 81 times your salary in a perfidious mortgage deal for a house of straw built on a flood plain), there is at least a chance you can buy a house and live to tell the tale. And if you do not, a nicely priced life insurance policy will leave your nearest and dearest with a valuable pile of bricks and mortar, gratis.

It was a grump by the name of Robert Ingersoll who said: “Few rich men own their property. The property owns them.” But never mind that. Think of the thrills and carry the risk of default with the pride of a Grand National contender sizing up Becher's for the second time of asking. There is nothing to fear but fear itself — and the dizziness that often overcomes those looking over a vertiginous precipice. Sub-prime? Worry not. Residential property prices are sublime, not in the least bit ridiculous. Hubris? What's that?