When the last time house prices fell I was sitting in a pub with a work friend. All those first time buyers or ones who had saved for a second home to make a little as a landlord many found themselves in suddenly negative equity.

Anyway two of his friends who were obviously very well off spent that whole evening taking calls from and phoning up people like that, offering them a price and saying the money would be in a bank in x time once the contract was signed. They could afford to sit on the property until things came back or it recouped by renting.

I reckon they bought about twenty - thirty odd houses in the space of a couple of pints. Their phones never stopped ringing.