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Self-delusion in print: viewing highly recommended

I've just received a note through my door from an estate agent, which describes the market in my particular pocket of south-west London as "looking buoyant".

The buoyancy they're talking about is, I think, the type normally exhibited by a corpse that's bloated with water and heading towards a rocky shoreline.

Prices are down 10% on last summer's high and Mrs W reports seeing local agents nodding off at their desks. But they still have a great line in patter, don't they?

The figures, incidentally, that you read in the papers are lagging wildly behind the reality on the ground. "Growth" in the Greater London housing market is not static or in the + 1 or 2% bracket. It's in serious negative territory since the start of 2008. Watch this space. The times, they are a changing. And what was it that Dylan said? "The first ones now will later be last"? Perhaps that was a message to the likes of Foxtons.

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