The house price statisticians have marked Hallowe’en with an appropriately gloomy set of numbers. The value of the average house has fallen by 14.6 per cent over the past 12 months, according to Nationwide.

Conditions are still buoyant in some locations and homes can still sell within days. But it does not lessen the feeling among buyers that they are being let down badly by the banks and the Government. No one longs for a return to the dangerous days of easy money that gave birth to the recession. Yet there is some bewilderment about why the more plentiful supply of mortgages promised at the time of the taxpayer bailout of the banks seems so tardy in arriving.

A further base rate cut is now widely forecast and money market rates have edged down to a level last seen in September 2003. At the time, the best-buy two-year fixed rate loan was 3.64 per cent; today the best equivalent rate is 5.49 per cent. This discrepancy sums up the disobliging attitude of the banks, which have trousered £34 billion of taxpayers’ cash but are not minded to lend it out.

Resentment is also focusing on the lack of effective action on repossessions. The Prime Minister may have instructed the banks to use eviction as a last resort but repossessions now account for about 25 per cent of the properties on offer at auction. This suggests that banks are paying lip service to Gordon Brown’s command.

Meanwhile, the implementation of the plan to allow housing associations to buy the homes of families in arrears and turn them into tenants has been delayed until January. In return for bailing out the banks, we expected some return for our enforced subsidy – cheaper mortgages and compassion for borrowers in desperate straits. There is little evidence of either.