Do you remember the housing slump? You probably don’t if you live in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where house prices last year rose by 13.4% according to the Land Registry. In north-west England, though, there was a fall of 3.5%.

In general, however, the signs of an upturn in the UK property market are becoming stronger. First-time home buyers are finding loans much easier to get, so that 12% more first-time purchases were completed last year according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, and one in five of the buyers borrowed 90% or more. This is what the politicians want, but at what point should the regulators start to worry that the lenders are rebuilding the mountain of risk that led to the pre-2007 bubble?