In America they call the syndrome McFear. You have just paid for your lunch at a McDonald’s drive-through. Imagine the sinking feeling if your Big Mac was not waiting for you at the next window – and there was no going back for your money. You would wish you had stayed home and made yourself peanut butter sandwiches instead.

The McFear syndrome was devised to describe the mood among traumatised investors who are now anxious for security and are unwilling to entrust their savings to banks that might fail to keep their money safe.

Even before the failure of Icesave, the Icelandic bank, there were signs of McFear in the UK. Some investors are preferring to keep their money not in banks but at home in a safe (sales are up 25 per cent) or in property.

Suddenly, for the badly spooked, bricks and mortar seems an almost reassuring option, despite the downturn and the higher £50,000 compensation guarantee limit on savings. A similar flight into property was one result of the collapse in 2000 of Equitable Life, the pensions company.

Buyers who are snapping up rundown homes or acquiring trophy London townhouses are telling estate agents that they are less concerned about the timing of the market’s recovery than they are about possessing something tangible, into which they can move a tenant. And the wrecks bought at auction come with a bonus – no stamp duty if the price is below £175,000.

There is, as yet, no evidence that peanut butter sandwiches are the comfort food of choice in this financial crisis. But the comfort purchases of property are yet another indicator of the power of those with ready cash in the current housing market.

They are wielding this financial muscle to gazunder, knowing that sellers must accept a lower price as other buyers are scarce, thanks to the continuing mortgage drought. Now one estate agent is trying to stamp out this practice. The current greed for bricks and mortar bargains makes the success of this worthy endeavour far from certain.